Former Greek Prime Minister Konstantinos Mitsotakis dies at the age of 98. He was one of the most prominent politicians in the country for decades. He is father of New Democracy leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis and of MP Dora Bakoyianni, a former Foreign Minister and Athens mayor and grandfather of young politician Kostas Bakoyiannis.
His family issued a press release saying that he passed away at 1 o’ clock Monday morning “surrounded by those whom he loved and those who loved him.”
Conservative Konstantinos Mitsotakis was first elected to the Greek Parliament in 1946 and re-elected several times until he quit politics in 2004.
He served as Prime Minister from 1990 until 1993.
The Mitsotakis family is considered as one of the powerful political families in Greece, together with the Karamanlis and Papandreou families.
Family
Konstantinos Mitsotakis was born 18. October 1918 in Halepa village, Chania, Crete, in an already powerful political family, linked to Eleftherios Venizelos on both sides. His grandfather Kostis Mitsotakis (1845-1898), a lawyer, journalist and short-time MP of Ottoman Crete, founded the Liberal Party, then “Party of the Barefeet” (Κόμμα των Ξυπολήτων) with Venizelos, and married the latter’s sister, Katigo Venizelou, Constantine’s grandmother. The 1878 Pact of Halepa, granting an Ottoman Crete a certain level of autonomy, was signed in his very home. His father Kyriakos Mitsotakis (1883–1944) , also MP for Chania in the Greek Parliament (1915–20) and leader of the Cretan volunteers in the First Balkan War, married Stavroula Ploumidaki, daughter of Charalambos Ploumidakis (el), the first Christian mayor of Chania and an MP at the time of the Cretan State, himself a first cousin of Eleftherios Venizelos.
He studied law and economics at the Athens University, graduated in 1940.
He had three daughters and one son.
His son-in-law Pavlos Bakoyiannis, a journalist, was assassinated by terror organization 17 November in 1989.
Politics
He was elected to the Greek Parliament for the first time in 1946, standing for the Liberal Party in his native prefecture of Chania, Crete. He followed most of the old Liberal Party into Georgios Papandreou’s Center Union in 1961.
In 1965 Mitsotakise led a group of dissidents, known as the “July apostates” or “apostasia”, who crossed the floor to bring about the fall of Papandreou’s government, which earned him the long-time hatred of Papandreou loyalists as well as a significant part of Greek society.
He was arrested in 1967 by the military junta but managed to escape to Turkey with a help of Foreign minister of Turkey Ihsan Sabri Caglayangil and lived in exile with his family in Paris, France, until his return in 1974.
In 1974 he campaigned as an independent and failed to be elected to Parliament. He was re-elected in 1977 as founder-leader of the small Party of New Liberals and in 1978 he merged his party with Constantine Karamanlis’s New Democracy party. He served as minister for economic coordination from 1978 to 1980, and as Minister for Foreign Affairs from 1980 to 1981.
Mitsotakis’s government moved swiftly to cut government spending as much as possible, privatise state enterprises and reform the civil service. In foreign policy, Mitsotakis took the initiative to have Greece formally recognize the state of Israel, and moved to reopen talks on American bases in Greece and to restore confidence among Greece’s economic and political partners. In June 1990, Mitsotakis became the first Greek Premier to visit the United States since the 1974. He promised to meet Greece’s NATO obligations, to prevent use of Greece as a base for terrorism, and to stop the rhetorical attacks on the United States that had been Papandreou’s hallmark.
During his three-year tenure, he consolidated Greece’s membership in the EU, known as the European Communities at that time, by securing his country’s accession to the union during the Maastricht Summit in December 1991. As foreign minister, he oversaw Greece’s entry into the EU a decade earlier.
FYROM name dispute
In the name dispute with then newly independent Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia Mitsotakis favored a composite name such as “Nova Macedonia”, for which he was accused at the time of being too lenient.
The heightened public irritation over the Macedonia naming issue caused several ND parliament members, led by Mitsotakis Foreign Minister Antonis Samaras [Prime Minister 2012-2015], to withdraw their support from the government.
Mitsotakis had to declare early elections in autumn 1993. Papandreou’s PASOK won the elections.
Mitsotakis then resigned as ND leader, although he remained the party’s honorary chairman.
In January 2004, Konstantinos Mitsotakis announced that he would retire from Parliament at the 7 March election, 58 years after his first election.
He was swimming until high age and his secret of long living was the Cretan diet.
According to Greek media, Constantinos Mitsotakis’ dream was to see his son Kyriakos becoming Prime Minister.
Funeral services will be held at 3 pm Wednesday, May 31 2017, at Athens Cathedral. He will be buried in Crete.
