‘Dinosaurs’ Tussle for Greek Premiership : Politics: It’s the clash of the septuagenarians as conservative incumbent Mitsotakis and Socialist Papandreou vie again.

ATHENS —  Once again, the two grand dinosaurs of Greek political life are wrestling for leadership of a nation poised uncomfortably between modern Europe and divisive Balkan backwardness.

In Greece’s fourth national elections since 1989, Prime Minister Constantine Mitsotakis is an underdog against challenger Andreas Papandreou, a former Berkeley economics professor who led Greece for eight autocratic years with profligate Socialist policies and polished anti-American rhetoric.

As campaigning ended Friday night with a giant Mitsotakis rally in central Athens answering a Papandreou multitude the night before, most polls pointed to victory Sunday for Papandreou with a comfortable majority in the 300-seat Greek Parliament. Two independent polls published Friday both gave Papandreou a six-point lead.

Beyond promising that the rich would bear a greater share of the burdens under a government pledged to social justice, Papandreou has been vague about his vision of the Greek future.

Greece’s ever-closer ties to Europe, though, make most observers think that there would be no return to spendthrift statism. The telltale Greek stock market seemed undismayed this week at the prospect of a Papandreou II.

Both Mitsotakis and Papandreou are 74, and even their admirers call them “the dinosaurs,” a reference to both their wrinkles and their wrangles. They have railed at one another from opposite sides of the political fence with unslaked vindictiveness for longer than most Greeks have been alive.

The new government will have a four-year mandate, making this the last likely electoral hurrah for the contentious septuagenarians. With the passing of Papandreou and Mitsotakis, Greece will probably have seen the last of old-fashioned street-fighter politics--the kind weaned on personal passion and ideological grit in a country that has sometimes been an uneasy partner in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the European Community.

Television played an unprecedented part in the campaign, mostly in the form of negative advertising, but in Greece this autumn, the size of the crowds still mattered to politicians and voters alike. The death of ideology may have pushed the dinosaurs closer to the center--and to one another--but never mind. Crowd-pleasing mud flies as satisfactorily as ever in Greece’s Mesozoic melee.

Vowing to make Greece “an equal member of a united Europe,” Mitsotakis lambasted his old foe at a campaign stop this week. “Papandreou has only one recipe: new loans, new taxes and how to waste our money,” he charged.

“Rebirth!” Papandreou demanded at his closing rally. Greece must “turn a gray page of its history” after “a catastrophic” Mitsotakis government.

The election, he said, will decide whether Greece “goes back to the Third World or forward toward European union.”

Mitsotakis is a vigorous, dry conservative who has governed at the head of the free-market New Democracy party since 1990, when he finally won a razor-thin parliamentary majority in the third of three successive electoral brawls with Papandreou. Mitsotakis says he will quit politics if he loses Sunday.

Papandreou is a somewhat enfeebled and sometimes repentant Socialist who ruled Greece from 1981 to 1989 and rules still over the Panhellenic Socialist Movement, universally known as Pasok. Papandreou is Pasok.

The 10 million Greeks make up the poorest member of the European Community. Greece’s standards and its services--from a Gargantuan bureaucracy to scandalous telecommunications--belong to the Third World, not Europe.

A foreign policy dispute within his party forced Mitsotakis to call the election six months early, but the campaign has been fought principally on the same bread-and-butter issues that propelled the last three.

Mitsotakis came to power attacking Papandreou’s economic policies. In the name of socialism, Papandreou borrowed deeply and spent widely, but not always wisely: His government was rocked by the largest financial scandal in Greek history. Papandreou’s nationalization of a bewildering array of money-losing enterprises pleased workers whose jobs were saved. But national debt and government deficit grew, inflation rose and business confidence sagged.

The free-market response from Mitsotakis was textbook austerity that has slashed inflation, restored confidence, improved the government’s books and triggered major new foreign investment. A selloff of nationalized enterprises and a 35% chunk of the national phone company would have brought $1.7 billion to government coffers by next spring, but the privatization program is hostage to the election.

The costs of change have included higher taxes, reduced social services and salaries that buy less. Mitsotakis might have been able to point to a standard-of-living turnaround six months from now, but not today.

“We have laid the foundations for national economic development with programs that have won applause of the international community,” Defense Minister Ioannis Varvitsiotis said in an interview Friday.

A 60-year-old former law professor and New Democracy stalwart, Varvitsiotis is a strong candidate to succeed Mitsotakis if the party loses Sunday. He acknowledges what may prove to be the fatal flaw in the economic overhaul: “The difficulty is that the improvements are not yet visible to the people.”

Pasok critics score Mitsotakis’ hesitation and improvisations in implementing new policies and the sapping infighting within New Democracy--typified by the government-killing defection of two parliamentarians last month over policy toward the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia.

“New Democracy has not had a clear program, but lots of personal policies,” said Christos Papoutsis, a 40-year-old economist and a Pasok delegate to the European Parliament.

“For the economy, they brought theoretical recipes . . . that are not apt here. As a result, they have not built better market conditions but have reinforced the black (unreported) economy.”

Under warm skies and a countryside still dressed for summer, Mitsotakis campaigned up and down Greece in his dark-horse search for a second term. Papandreou, who had open-heart surgery in 1988 and has been ill since, limited his public appearances to a handful of set-piece rallies.

That seems to have been enough. Polls showed Papandreou leading Mitsotakis before the election was called last month. And although he has closed the gap in recent samples, Mitsotakis still trailed Friday.

Ironically, electoral reform that Mitsotakis engineered to favor the leading party at the expense of the runner-up may work against him this time. (Three minor parties representing unabashed Communists, a coalition of leftists and followers of renegade former Foreign Minister Antonis Samaras are on the ballot but are not expected to be a factor Sunday.)

Under the old law, Mitsotakis could not form a government after his first two contests against Papandreou in 1989 because he could not muster a parliamentary majority despite a strong plurality. Under the new law, either Mitsotakis or Papandreou would be assured of a working majority even with a 1% vote difference, according to Greek election specialists.

Left-right divisions still run deep in Greece, and with them political loyalties. Voters reluctantly turned against Papandreou at a time of economic distress when his government was riddled by scandal and he was accused of corruption charges that were never proved.

Now, with economic hard times still at hand and with still more to come, there appear to be enough disenchanted voters on the conservative side of the ledger to cost Mitsotakis his job.

“Pasok deserves another term in office because that is what the people want,” said Pasok’s Papoutsis.

And that, judging by the pre-election augurs in the country that invented democracy, is exactly what they will get.