George Papandreou and Antonis Samaras may be locked in a political battle that could send the global economy back into recession. But it was not always that way, writes Kerin Hope in Athens.
Back in the 1970s, the now prime minister and conservative opposition leader were friends and room-mates at Amherst College in the US. While disagreeing on ideology, they were united in opposition to the military junta ruling Greece. Mr Papandreou, the grandson of a popular centrist prime minister, went on to study sociology at the London School of Economics while Mr Samaras, from a royalist family, took an MBA at Harvard.
“They’d never have imagined they could become rival political leaders trying to avert a default,” said another member of the Athens establishment.
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Financial Times
