Greece: Slap for the Center

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Prime Minister George Papandreou's lure for leftist support in last February's national elections was a pledge to repeal anti-Communist legislation en acted between 1946 and 1949 when Communist guerrillas tried to seize power. Sure enough, Papandreou's Cen ter Union, having garnered 173 seats in Greece's 300-member Parliament, rammed through a bill to free most Communist prisoners convicted of sedition and murder, abolish political deportations, and deprive the police of power to withhold work permits on political grounds.

In municipal elections last week, Papandreou's more liberal policies toward the left were put to the test, and the ruling Center Union emerged the principal loser. Leftist and pro-Communist candidates running under the banner of the United Democratic Left Party or as independents won more than half of the 230 mayoralty races. And it was mostly at the expense of Papandreou's follow ers. Most embarrassing to the government was the balloting in Athens, where 1,850,000 of Greece's 9,000,000 people live. There Pausanias Katsotas, a minister in Papandreou's Cabinet who resigned to run for mayor, polled only 25% of the vote, trailing both leftists and rightists.