Konstantinos Mitsotakis

Konstantinos Mitsotakis (2008)

Konstantinos Mitsotakis ( Greek Κωνσταντίνος Μητσοτάκης , born October 18, 1918 in Chania , Crete ; † May 29, 2017 in Athens ) was a Greek politician . He was Prime Minister of Greece from April 1990 to October 1993 .

Life

Coming from a politically very active family ( Eleftherios Venizelos was his uncle, his father and both grandfathers were MPs), he took part in the Cretan resistance against the German occupation of the island of Crete .

He studied law and economics at the University of Athens and was elected for the first time as a member of the Chania constituency in 1946 and then ten more times until 1981 . Liberal by his family origins, he initially belonged to the Central Union of Georgios Papandreou in the sixties , until in 1965, as the leader of a group of "renegades" ( Greek αποστάτες ), he initiated the overthrow of the Papandreou government, of which he had belonged as Minister of Economics .

He was arrested by the military junta after their coup d'état on April 21, 1967, but was able to escape and lived in exile until 1974. After running unsuccessfully as an independent candidate in 1974, he succeeded in re-entering parliament in 1977 as a member of the small “New Liberals” party. In 1978 he joined the Nea Dimokratia founded by Konstantinos Karamanlis . 1978 to 1980 he was Minister for Economic Coordination and 1980/81 Foreign Minister.

In 1984 he was elected chairman of the New Democracy. In addition to his socialist arch-rival Andreas Papandreou , the son of Georgios Papandreou , he dominated Greek politics in the 1980s and 1990s. As the party leader of the conservative Nea Dimokratia he could no longer be certain of a majority in his Cretan homeland; he therefore ran for office in Thessaloniki and Athens from 1985.

After his party finally emerged victorious in the third parliamentary elections within just one year, he was elected Prime Minister in 1990 with a majority of one vote. His government cut public spending, privatized state-owned companies, and initiated reform of the public service. He was the first Greek head of government to visit the USA in 26 years and improved relations with the USA, which had been bad under Papandreou.

In the parliamentary elections in 1993, the New Democracy lost the parliamentary majority again to Papandreous PASOK . Mitsotakis resigned as chairman of the Nea Dimokratia, but remained its honorary chairman. In 2004 he retired from active politics.

His daughter, Dora Bakogianni , was Foreign Minister from 2006 to 2009, his son Kyriakos Mitsotakis is a member of parliament, chairman of the Nea Dimokratia and, since July 2019, Greek Prime Minister.

In Greece Mitsotakis was considered a notorious "unlucky fellow"; in jokes and satirical anecdotes, his presence is associated with a wide variety of accidents.

Mitsotakis died in Athens in May 2017 at the age of 98.

Honors

• Robert Schuman Medal (1986)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Former head of government Mitsotakis has died. In: FM1Today. May 29, 2017. Retrieved May 29, 2017 . 
2. ^ Biography Mitsotakis (Greek) [1]

Predecessor: Ioannis Giannopoulos	Minister of Economic Affairs February 1, 1951 - October 27, 1951	Successor: Georgios Grigoriou
Predecessor: Nikolaos Gazis	Minister of Economic Affairs November 8, 1963 - December 31, 1963	Successor: Petros Striotis
Predecessor: Petros Striotis	Minister of Economic Affairs February 19, 1964 - July 15, 1965	Successor: Stelios Alamanis
Predecessor: Georgios Mavros	Minister of Coordination July 16, 1965 - August 20, 1965	Successor: Dimitrios Papaspyrou
Predecessor: Dimitrios Papaspyrou	Minister of Coordination September 17, 1965 - December 22, 1966	Successor: Ioannis Paraskevopoulos
Predecessor: Panagiotis Papaligouras	Coordination Minister May 10, 1978 - May 10, 1980	Successor: Ioannis Boutos
Predecessor: Georgios Rallis	Foreign Minister May 10, 1980 - October 21, 1981	Successor: Ioannis Charalambopoulos
Predecessor: Xenophon Zolotas	Prime Minister of Greece April 11, 1990 - October 13, 1993	Successor: Andreas Papandreou