Rice Pudding

"In the old days," sighed Athens Tavernkeeper Costa Pandelidis, "elections were elections. There were free drinks. There were bands and songs and dancing. There was bloodshed. The walls were plastered with pictures of candidates. This year the government has forbidden posters and forbidden outdoor meetings. This is not an election; this is nothing but rice pudding."

The Greek voters, as they go to the polls next week, will find in the pudding mainly the same old-line politicians who have seasoned Greece's 20 cabinets and two elections since World War II. But there are two new parties:

P: The Communist-front "United Democratic Party." The Reds, defeated and dispersed in the civil war, are trying to get back into business by running a slate of absentee candidates, most of whom are in jail or in exile.

P: Field Marshal Alexander Papagos' "Greek Rally" Party. Greece's No. 1 hero --he whipped the Greek army into shape, then whipped the Communists--quit his post as commander in chief in a row with King Paul (TIME, June 11), went into politics to keep Greece from further "political decomposition."

Old-line politicos have raised a hue & cry that Papagos plans a dictatorship. Chief among his opponents: former Premier Nicholas Plastiras, Centrist, himself a onetime general, though considerably less successful than Papagos, and Sophocles Venizelos, a bridge-playing, bumbling, well-intentioned Liberal. The U.S. has taken no stand in this election, but with Greece about to become a full member of the North Atlantic Treaty alliance, there is no doubt that U.S. military men would like to see an efficient administrator and housecleaner like Papagos on the job.

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