In an address to the nation on Wednesday evening, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis nominated judge Ekaterini Sakellaropoulou for President of the Hellenic Republic. The president of the country’s top court, the Council of State, will be the first woman as head of state in the conservative country.
Justifying his choice, Mitsotakis said that Sakellaropoulou is a non-partisan choice that puts rule of law and the strive for gender equality at the heart of his vision for the republic.
Her approval by the Parliament is considered as secured as the new revised Constitution does not link anymore the election of the President with dissolving the Parliament and early elections, should the voting end in deadlock.
In the first and/or second round of voting she would need 200 votes. IN the third round the number of neccessary votes is 180, in the fourth round a simple majority of 151 in a Palriament of 300. New Democracy has 158 seats. for the fifth and last round of voting, the simple majority of present lawmakers would be essential.
The voting procedure is scheduled to start on January 22.
In first reactions from the opposition, KINAL/PASOK seems content with the PM’s choice. KINAL is certainly relieved that Mitsotsakis did not propose former finance minister Evangelos Venizelos, as recently leaked in the press.
SYRIZA seems to take its time to come up with an official announcement and position on Sakellaropoulou. However, it was SYRIZA and then PM Alexis Tsipras who had proposed her as top judge for the Council of State in 2018. In a latest development on Thursday afternoon, SYRIZA decided to support Sakellaropoulou, Alexis Tsipras said.
The scenarios about the next President preoccupied the local press in the last two months. Politicians’ names – mostly former PMs like Samaras, Papadimos, Simitis, Karamanlis, but also Venizelos – were popping up in the press and quickly disappeared again due to lack of acceptance by a portion of the public, mainly on social media. However, the Prime Minister seems to have accelerated the announcement of the nomination on Wednesday.
For sure, PM Mitsotakis did not need to make the announcement on an address to nation, about an issue for which the waste majority of Greeks has little interest. But certainly he needed to change today’s heavy political agenda and the sharp criticism New Democracy suffered due to Migration fiasco and diplomatic defeat: the new Migration Ministry and Greece’s exclusion from the Libya Conference in Berlin.
PS Despite the honors and the “Greek first”, the next President of Greece will be able to ravel across the country and the world, but be deprived access to the monks’ republic on Mt Athos for the simple fact that she is a woman.
An once in a life time golden opportunity to try to change the status quo in the monks’ republic.
