In 1978 Konstantinos Karamanlis decided to spend the Easter holidays in Rhodes. The Minister of Coordination Georgios Rallis accompanied him. The Prime Minister’s closest associate was about to play the sacrificial role of Iphigenia, only to become K. Karamanlis’ successor at the helm of New Democracy and Prime Minister in May 1980.
Konstantinos Karamanlis had a vision and a concern; he dedicated himself to the vision of a united Europe and at the same time he was concerned about the political developments in Greece. As the discussions went on about Greece’s accession in the European Community, he considered Greece the country’s accession a given, but was not sure that he would have the consent of an increased majority in Parliament (180 votes) that would approve the accession. The magic number of 180 was also the number of votes that K. Karamanlis needed, according to the Constitution, in order to be elected President.
Methodically and decisively, K. Karamanlis decided upon New Democracy’s much debated, at the time, expansion to the left and right. During that period there were many independent MPs in Parliament from failing parties, such as the Center Union, National Faction and the Neoliberals of Mr. Mitsotakis.
There was no exchange of course, but K. Karamanlis decided to expand New Democracy’s parliamentary force with enough independent MPs to get to the magic number of 180.
Amongst those necessary MPs was the neoliberal Konstantinos Mitsotakis and the centrist Athanasios Kanellopoulos. The former asked for the Ministry of Coordination and the latter the Ministry of Finances. That resulted in the ‘exile’ of the Coordination Minister G. Rallis to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, while the Finance Minister Ioannis Boutos was transferred to the Ministry of Agriculture. It may have been easy to “sacrifice” Ioannis Boutos, but with Georgios Rallis thing were different.
So K. Karamanlis decided to go to Rhodes for Easter with Georgios Rallis and during a game of golf he told him his thoughts.
G. Rallis instantly understood the leader’s desire and submitted. Two years later he became Prime Minister, succeeding K. Karamanlis.
Most Presidential elections have have political intentions.
The election of Christos Sartzetakis was planned by Koutsogiorgas. The right-wing Konstantinos Stephanopoulos became President with PASOK’s backing, which did not want elections during that period. Antonis Samaras forced that election, as he had the votes that PASOK needed to reach the necessary 180.
The current President Karolos Papoulias, a prominent PASOK officer, became President thanks to the votes of a New Democracy’s administration.
There is more to come…
Stavros P. Psycharis
Originally published in the Sunday print edition
