It was one of the most famous conspiracy stories circulating on the Internet during the years memoranda.
Even today there are citizens who believe that the Speaker of Parliament Mr. Anna Benaki - Psarouda He had known since 2005 that the financial crisis would put the Greek people in an unprecedented situation and that is why he warned us indirectly but clearly much earlier through a speech he read in front of the then President of the Republic. Charles Papoulias and is captured on video.
He knew very well that our national sovereignty would be curtailed, that fundamental rights of citizens would be violated, and that we would know powers beyond the known and established, which would test the resilience of the Republic.
Did the experienced politician and current president of the Academy of Athens really prophesy all this? Did he really know what the new order of things was striking for, as many still believe today? After all, was Ms. Benaki a modern Pythia who carried out utilities even if she was not in ecstasy in contrast to the primacy of the god Apollo in the oracle of Delphi? Let's put the facts in order and we will give the answers.
On Tuesday, February 8, 2005, the Plenary Session of the Parliament elects, with the very first vote, the then 76-year-old Mr. Karolos Papoulias to the highest state office, that of President of the Republic.
Out of the 300 deputies, 279 voted for him, that is, all but the KKE and SYRIZA who chose to declare themselves present "; incidentally, at that time we had a New Democracy government with Costas Karamanlis as prime minister who had won the elections a year earlier with 45,36% and 165 seats and the official opposition is PASOK of George Papandreou with 117 seats.
Shortly after the vote in the so-called "Temple of Democracy", the Speaker of the Hellenic Parliament, Mr. Benaki, along with the other members of the presidency, went to Mr. Papoulias' office, as the standard stipulates, in order to officially announce the result. . There, the third-ranked institutional agent of the place will read to him the short written speech he had prepared:
"Mr. President, the Presidency of the Hellenic Republic is undertaking for a period of five years where important events and developments will take place," he will be told in quotation marks, to add the following enigmatic statement:
"European unification will be promoted by voting, possibly, and the constitutional treaty, national borders and part of national sovereignty will be curtailed for the sake of peace and prosperity and security in enlarged Europe, human and civil rights will suffer changes, as they can be protected, but perhaps violated by authorities and authorities beyond the known and established, and yet democracy will meet challenges and be tested by possible new forms of government. " .
Ms. Benaki-Psarouda, both because of her character and her composition, would not say anything in the rhetoric. Hundreds of websites, newspapers, radio stations and television channels then focused on "restricting our national sovereignty" and possible violations of human and civil rights "by principles and powers beyond the known and established". Politicians, journalists and the general public said that "the President is preventing our destruction". And when after five years we entered the memoranda, almost everyone was convinced that Mrs. Benaki knew everything.
On February 13, 2005, just five days after the speech, she hurried to restore the truth, sending a letter to the newspaper "Kathimerini". However, few had bothered to read it and artificially it had not received much publicity.
The academic, both then and now, stresses that she did not intend to express concerns but only findings and remarks about the weight of the adjustment to the new data that existed.
Specifically:
- As for the borders, it did not refer to the geographical borders between the European states, which would still exist for the spatial description of each country. He referred to the substantive content of the borders, "which is gradually not only limited, but in the future is completely abolished. "People, capital, services, ideas, habits are already freely circulating among the Member States of the European Union," he said in 2005. The free movement would be governed by European laws, which would be more effective than ever. what national laws. After all, according to her, our national borders are secured more since they are transformed into external borders of Europe.
- As for the sovereignty, "And only if one looks at Article 28 (3) of the Constitution, which ratifies the European treaties, will one see that the Constitution speaks of voluntary" restrictions on the exercise of national sovereignty ".
After all, isn't monetary policy (the drachma is now a sweet memory), customs policy, trade policy fully assigned to the European Union? In a little while, other sectors belonging to the Member States, such as agriculture, transport, consumer protection, energy, the environment, etc. will be regulated by the EU "he argued. And this, according to Ms. Benaki, not because one wants to strip the states of their powers, but because the states and citizens voluntarily recognize that the exercise of certain powers at central European level strengthens Europe and benefits every European citizen.
- With regard to human rights, the former Speaker of Parliament has argued that the European Constitution includes the well-known Charter of Fundamental Rights, which in many respects protects the citizen more effectively than domestic law, and also provides protection. and against European institutions. It is common, of course, that in an environment of not ten, but hundreds of millions of people, rights are not only protected but also more easily violated.
In fact, in order to resolve any misunderstandings that Ms. Benaki was referring to the European Constitution being voted at that time to determine the future of the old continent and our country (regardless of whether it did not apply in the process because it was not ratified by all national parliaments). , one can also refer to her presentation she made on February 9, 2005 (ie earlier) during a meeting of the Economic and Social Committee.