Next month Greece will have a new president for a five-year term. Unlike Ireland, where the electorate later this year will decide on a successor to Michael D Higgins, Greece’s new president will be chosen not by its 9.8 million voters, who have no say in the matter, but by the 300 people at the pinnacle of the political system: the members of parliament. And, to be realistic, the 156 MPs of ruling New Democracy.
In 2020 prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis took the uncharacteristic step of going outside the party political system to propose as president Katerina Sakellaropoulou. She had two distinctions: she would be the first woman to occupy the presidency, and, as the head of the Greek supreme court, she was non-partisan.
Her election could be compared to that of Mary Robinson in Ireland in 1990, in that it was mould-breaking and paved the way for a new perspective on the role of president.
Mitsotakis’s choice was so unusual that cynics saw it as an attempt to demonstrate his well-hidden liberal inclinations. It was the right choice.
Sakellaropoulou has been a gracious, unassuming and dignified president, despite alienating the political far-right for being a single mother and, more significantly, supporting the new gay marriage equality legislation, for which she was shunned by the Greek Orthodox church.
She was available to all – for example, at her first Christmas in office visiting the sole inhabitant of the island of Kinaros in the eastern Aegean.
I myself received an extremely warm and graceful, handwritten letter from her when she received my book about Greece, The Eye of the Xenos.
She headed the memorial parade “Never Again: Thessaloniki-Auschwitz”, remembering the Nazi removal of the city’s Jewish population, at a time when the mayor of Thessaloniki was attacked by members of the fascist party for his support for the city’s new Holocaust Museum.
Sakellaropoulou also described the Russian invasion of Ukraine as “a direct conflict of values, between freedom and authoritarianism”. She has championed the role of women in what remains a patrilinear society. And she has spoken about the condition of many Greeks who have “zero quality of life”.
Mitsotakis’s new nominee, Konstantinos Tasoulas, is a former speaker of parliament, a “safe pair of hands”. In nominating him, Mitsotakis said the presidency should have “clear political attributes” and that Tasoulas would be a “unifying” president. To nominate Tasoulas was, in effect, to insult President Sakellaropoulou by not renewing her term of office.
The first vote, on January 25th, required the support of 200 parliamentarians. Tasoulas gained 160 and he got the same support in the second round. On the third vote, Tasoulas needs only 180 votes, and, if still unelected, the final vote later this month would require only a simple majority of MPs, which he will surely win.
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Cynics – who seem to be in the majority in this instance – see Mitsotakis’s decision as a shrewd peace-offering to the more right-wing elements in New Democracy, which includes Tasoulas, and a chance to copper-fasten the majority of a more unified party.
Mitsotakis has also indicated he intends to propose a constitutional amendment which will restrict the presidency to a single, non-renewable six-year term. This proposed change to the constitution has been criticised as a deft but blatant attempt to ensure the continued dominance of the conservatism which has always characterised Greek society and which Sakellaropoulou has adroitly pushed against.
Nikos Alivizatos, a professor of law, has argued that Mitsotakis’s strategy is to reduce the power of the presidency to mere symbolism, where at present under the constitution the president functions “to regulate the function of the institutions of the republic”.
A single, six-year term would put Greece in the minority of EU republics. With the exception of Italy (where a seven-year president can theoretically be re-elected indefinitely) and Malta (a single-term position), all EU republics are like Ireland: the president can be reappointed or re-elected for a second term. Alivizatos argues that such a move would “exempt the ruling party from obligation to explain why it is not renewing the term” of the incumbent president.
Due to the fragmented parliamentary opposition, the position of New Democracy is almost unassailable, despite its demonstrable failure to sustain the health service, to reform the educational system, to cope with frequent crises in waste management and water supplies (especially to the islands), to say nothing of rising prices which are pushing wage-earners increasingly towards poverty.
I am sure that Tasoulas will be a dutiful president, mindful of the dignity and the limitations of his office. But most voters, if they had the choice, would have reappointed Sakellaropoulou. But the day when they have that privilege is very far away.
