Former Prime Minister Konstantinos Mitsotakis has been admitted to “Iasis” general clinic in Chania, with an infection of the respiratory system. His condition is stable and there is no cause for concern, said an announcement from his political office.
Mitsotakis, 88, a Greek politician and former Prime Minister of Greece, was born in Chania, Crete, to a political family.
He was elected to the Greek Parliament for the first time in 1946, standing for the Liberal Party in his native prefecture of Chania. He followed most of the old Liberal Party into George Papandreou’s Center Union in 1961. But in 1965, he led a group of dissidents, known as the “July apostates” or “apostasia”, to bring about the fall of Papandreou’s government, which earned him the undying hatred of Papandreou loyalists as well as a significant part of Greek society. In 1967, he was arrested by the military junta but managed to escape to Turkey with the help of current Turkish foreign secretary Ihsan Sabri Caglayangil and lived in exile until his return in 1974.
In 1974, he campaigned as an independent and failed to be elected to Parliament. In 1977, he was re-elected as founder-leader of the small Party of New Liberals and in 1978, he merged his party with Constantine Karamanlis’ New Democracy party. He served as Minister of Economic Coordination from 1978 to 1980, and as Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1980 to 1981.
The New Democracy (ND) government was defeated by Andreas Papandreou’s PASOK in 1981, and in 1984, Mitsotakis succeeded Evangelos Averoff as ND leader. He and Andreas Papandreou, the son of George Papandreou, dominated Greek politics for the next decade: their mutual dislike dated back to the fall of George Papandreou’s government in 1965.
Mitsotakis soundly defeated Papandreou in the June 1989 elections. However, in a controversial move, Papandreou’s government had modified the election system a few months earlier to require a party to win 50 percent of the vote in order to govern alone. Thus, Mitsotakis was unable to form a government even though ND was the clear winner of the elections, with 20 more seats than PASOK. He was unable to garner support from the 6 MPs he needed to form a government, so Court of Cassation president Yiannis Grivas became acting Prime Minister and presided over new elections in November 1989. This election yielded the same result as in June. ND finished 20 seats ahead of PASOK, but was still just short of forming a government.
After another period of deadlock, fresh elections in April 1990 produced another landslide ND victory, but left Mitsotakis unable to govern alone. After the lone MP from Democratic Renewal agreed to go into coalition, Mitsotakis finally became Prime Minister. Thus, despite winning one of the most decisive elections in modern Greek history (27 seats ahead of PASOK), Mitsotakis’ government was very weak on paper, with a majority of only one vote.
Mitsotakis’s government moved swiftly to cut government spending as much as possible, privatize state enterprises and reform the civil service.
Mitsotakis’ government had already restored the election system back to its original form, which allowed Papandreou’s PASOK to obtain clear parliamentary majority after winning the premature 1993 elections and return to office. Mitsotakis then resigned as ND leader, although he remained the party’s honorary chairman. In January 2004, Mitsotakis announced his retiremet from Parliament at the March 7 elections, 56 years after his first election.
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