Georgios Rallis

Georgios Rallis ( Greek Γεώργιος Ράλλης ; * December 26, 1918 in Athens ; † March 15, 2006 ) was a Greek politician . He was Prime Minister of Greece from May 10, 1980 to October 21, 1981.

Even after his tenure, Rallis continued to gain popularity as an elder statesman across all parties.

Life

origin

Rallis comes from a long-established family whose roots go back to the Byzantine Empire. His grandfather Dimitrios Rallis (1844–1921) was Greek Prime Minister five times (1897, 1903, 1905, 1909 and 1921), his maternal grandfather Georgios Theotokis (1844–1916) four times (1899–1901, 1903, 1903–1904 and 1905– 1909). His father was also Prime Minister for a short time, though not democratically elected, but only set up by the German occupation.

career

Rallis belonged to the conservative party, was elected to the Greek parliament for the first time in 1950 and was first minister in the government of Alexandros Papagos in 1954 . He joined the Ethniki Rizospastiki Enosis ( National Radical Union, ERE) of Konstantinos Karamanlis and served as a minister in his government until 1963. After the 1967 military coup , Rallis was arrested and banished to Kasos Island after calling for democracy to be restored. He was later allowed to leave the country and remained in exile until the democratic revolution in 1974 .

After his return, Rallis became Minister of the Interior for a short time, then Minister in the Prime Minister's Office in the Karamanlis-led government of national unity. He kept this post after the elections on November 17, 1974 in the conservative government formed by Karamanlis. In 1976 Rallis also took over the Ministry of Education, which he led until the end of 1977. He led the educational reform and pushed through the abolition of the artificial Katharevousa as the official language and its replacement by the modern Greek vernacular Dimotiki . In the new government formed in late 1977, which was in turn led by Karamanlis, Rallis initially held the position of Minister for Coordination before he became Foreign Minister in 1978. He was the first Greek foreign minister ever to visit the Soviet Union and worked to improve relations with Bulgaria and Yugoslavia . He also led the accession negotiations with the European Economic Community (EEC).

When Karamanlis resigned in 1980, the delegates of Nea Dimokratia elected him as the new party leader and Rallis took over the office of Prime Minister. During his brief tenure, Greece became the tenth member state of the European Economic Community . In the following year, however, he lost the parliamentary elections against the charismatic Andreas Papandreou of PASOK and resigned as party chairman. Later Rallis had disagreements with his successor Konstantinos Mitsotakis and was for some time an independent parliamentarian.

Although Rallis had become prime minister when his party began to lose favor with voters, his objectivity and humility made him popular across party lines. He wrote 14 books on politics and modern Greek history and has been a guest on many television programs on Greek history. On March 15, 2006, he died of heart disease.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Cabinet lists of the General Secretariat of the Greek Government ( Memento of the original from September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
2. ↑ Cabinet lists of the General Secretariat of the Greek Government ( Memento of the original from September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
3. ↑ Cabinet lists of the General Secretariat of the Greek Government ( Memento of the original from September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  

predecessor	Office	successor
Konstantinos Karamanlis	Prime Minister of Greece 1980–1981	Andreas Papandreou