1985 Greek Presidential Election

The 1985 Greek presidential election was an indirect election for the position of President of the Hellenic Republic and was held by the Hellenic Parliament in March 1985.

The election became central part of the first constitutional crisis of the Third Hellenic Republic
triggered by the Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou, who suddenly declared not to support Constantine Karamanlis for a second term as President of the Republic, and instead backed Christos Sartzetakis, a Supreme Court of Greece judge popular to Left voters. Papandreou's choice was controversial because it was accompanied by proposals for constitutional reforms designed to further increase the power of his position by reducing the presidential powers, which were acting as checks and balances against the powerful executive branch. Moreover, the election was conducted under a tense and confrontational atmosphere due to Papandreou's constitutionally dubious tactics. The opposition, New Democracy led by Constantine Mitsotakis and Karamanlis' former party, deemed the vote illegal, with Mitsotakis threatening to remove Sartzetakis from the presidency if they won the upcoming elections, intensifying the constitutional crisis. The confrontation dominated and polarized the election campaigns. However, Sartzetakis' election helped Papandreou and his socialist PASOK party to secure the 1985 Greek parliamentary election despite Papandreou's failure to address Greece's worsening economy. After the elections, all political parties accepted Sartzetakis as president, ending the constitutional crisis, and the constitutional amendments took effect in 1986.

Background

On 6 March 1985, New Democracy announced that they would support Karamanlis' second Presidency term, while on the same day, the KKE party declared that they would put forward their own candidate. The press anticipated that Papandreou would also support Karamanlis, since he had assured Karamanlis his support in person. However, Papandreou changed his mind at the last moment, siding with the left wing of PASOK, which did not want Karamanlis, and instead backed Christos Sartzetakis (a Supreme Court of Greece judge known for his principled handling of the 1963 murder of left-wing deputy Grigoris Lambrakis and viewed favorably by the left, and a protagonist in Costas Gavras' 1969 movie "Z" based on the novel of Vassilis Vassilikos). The announcement occurred at the Central Committee of PASOK on 9 March. This move surprised some of Papanderou's ministers, much of his party's rank-and-file, and even Sartzetakis himself, who was not consulted in advance. Later on, it was revealed that the supposedly spontaneous change of mind was to camouflage Papandreou's long-held constitutional designs since Sartzetakis not only knew about it well in advance but also that there had been two other judicial figures who rejected Papandreou's offer. At the same time, Papandreou announced plans for a constitutional reform, which rekindled the debate about the form of the republic and further polarized the political environment by damaging the consensus between the two dominant political parties, PASOK and New Democracy, that existed between 1981 and 1985.

Papandreou also argued that it would be illogical for Karamanlis to preside over any constitutional reform since much of the constitution of 1974 was heavily influenced by Karamanlis himself. Mitsotakis accused Papandreou of creating a constitutional crisis to remove Karamanlis from office to establish a totalitarian constitution. Papandreou informed Karamanlis of his decision via his deputy, , as he could not bring himself to do so in person. In response, Karamanlis resigned from the Presidency on 10 March 1985, two weeks before the termination of his term, and was replaced by PASOK's Speaker of the Hellenic Parliament, Ioannis Alevras, as acting president.

Parliamentary votes for president

Parliamentary rules

Sartzetakis was the sole candidate since the political opposition from New Democracy, led by Constantine Mitsotakis, abstained. According to the Constitution of 1975, up to three rounds of a parliamentary vote were permitted for presidential candidates; the first two rounds required more than 200 votes out of 300 members of parliament, and in the third round, 180 votes out of 300. If all three rounds failed, then new elections would be held. Papandreou could only rely upon approximately 164 MPs (he had expelled six PASOK MPs for criticizing him since 1981), 13 MPs from the communist party (KKE), and five independent MPs (about 182).

Vote eligibility of the acting president

The opposition raised the issue of whether Alevras could participate in the parliamentary vote for his successor, requesting to be precluded from the presidential vote and his deputy rights while acting president. Specifically, the Constitution of 1975 states that the president's office is incompatible with any other office (Article 30). Constitutional scholars supported this viewpoint. Specifically, academic Nikolaos Saripolos believed that only the Constituent Assembly could determine whether Alevras could vote. PASOK argued that there was no explicit provision in the constitution, so this issue should be resolved in the Parliament; an opinion from and friend of Papandreou. Ultimately, the PASOK-dominated parliament decided to allow it, with New Democracy deputies leaving the chamber. PASOK deputy Agamemnon Koutsogiorgas later argued in Parliament that the issue raised by constitutional scholars on Alevras' ineligibility to vote due to Article 30 in the Constitution applies only to elected presidents and therefore does not apply to Alevras.

Voting rounds

The first two rounds failed to elect Sartzetakis as president, which took place on 17 and 23 March. The elections were carried out in conditions of high political tension; at one point, a New Democracy deputy momentarily grabbed the ballot box. Like in the previous rounds, in the third round on 29 March, colored ballots (in blue color for Sartzetakis) and semi-transparent envelopes were used. New Democracy chairman Mitsotakis accused Papandreou of violating constitutional principle of secret ballot (Article 32), by forcing his deputies to cast their vote with colored ballots. However, Mitsotakis' concern was dismissed because PASOK controlled the majority in the Parliament. Mitsotakis and Papandreou ended up having a verbal confrontation. Mitsotakis claimed Papandreou had no respect for the Parliament, and Papandreou responded, with Mitsotakis' role in the Iouliana of 1965 in mind, that the latter was the last person entitled to speak about respect. Despite vigorous protests from the opposition, PASOK members used colored ballots under strict surveillance to spot potential defectors. Outside the building of the Parliament, PASOK supporters were chanting.

In the third round on 29 March, Sartzetakis was voted president with a decisive vote from Alevras since Papandreou's party suffered the defection of two MPs, who Papandreou accused of taking bribes from Mitsotakis' party. Mitsotakis considered the vote illegal and claimed that if New Democracy won the elections, Sartzetakis would not be president by bringing the legality of the process to Council of State, further deepening the constitutional crisis.

Aftermath

With Sartzetakis as president, Papandreou formally submitted the proposals for constitutional amendments by adding to the previous one the removal of a secret ballot for president.

Both parties continued their confrontations in the campaigns for the June 1985 parliamentary election, where the political polarization reached new heights. Mitsotakis declared, "In voting, the Greek people will also be voting for a president" and also warned that there is a danger of sliding towards an authoritarian one-party state. The president's office responded, "The president of the republic will remain the vigilant guardian of the constitution." From PASOK, Agamemnon Koutsogiorgas described what was at stake not as "oranges and tomatoes but the confrontation between two worlds." Papandreou followed this by characterizing the upcoming elections as a fight between light and darkness in his rallies, implying that PASOK represented the "forces of light" since its logo was a rising sun. Papandreou further argued that every vote against PASOK was a vote for the return of the Right with the slogan "Vote PASOK to prevent a return of the right." The communists, persecuted by the Right in the 1950s, protested against Papandreou's dwelling on the past, pointing out that the 1980s were not the same as the 1950s. The Economist magazine described Greece as a "country divided," tearing itself apart and opening the wounds of civil war. Just before the elections, Karamanlis broke his silence and urged the Greeks to be cautious with their vote (without explicitly advising who to vote), commenting that PASOK had brought "confusion and uncertainty." However, Karamanlis' statement was not broadcast on TV and radio, which were controlled by the state and governing party, i.e., PASOK.

In the event, PASOK was re-elected with 45.82% of the vote, losing approximately 2.3% from 1981, while New Democracy increased its share of the vote by 4.98% to 40.84%. Papandreou's gamble worked to his benefit because he gained from far-left voting blocks covering the losses from the centrist voters, and appealed to socialist voters who rejected Karamanlis's perceived hindrance of PASOK's policies. Papandreou had the upper hand over Mitsotakis in which he argued that a vote for Mitsotakis is a vote for a constitutional anomaly, convincing a significant fraction of Greek voters. Richard Clogg states that the large-scale rally by Mitsotakis on 2 June at Syntagma Square may have panicked communists to vote for PASOK; the communist parties lost a significant share of the vote.

After the election results, Mitsotakis accepted Sartzetakis as president and the head of the state. Papandreou's constitutional proposals took effect in 1986.

The case also reached the courts, with the plenary session of the Council of State ruling that the direct judicial review of the election of the President was inadmissible and the Athens One-member Magistrates’ Court ruling in passing that the election of the President was ''irregular'' and ''amounted to an abrogation of'' ''popular sovereignty'', while it considered that the subsequent political legitimacy (following the victory of PASOK in the 1985 election) did not negate the unconstitutionality of the act.Απόφαση Μονομελούς Πλημμελειοδικείου Αθηνών 84464/1985 (Αρχείον Νομολογίας 1985, σ. 574) " ..''ανεξάρτητα του ζητήματος της θεμελίωσης της νομιμοποιήσεως της εξουσίας του Προέδρου της Δημοκρατίας στη κανονιστική δύναμη των πραγμάτων που ρύθμισαν οι εκλογές και της αναγνωρίσεως του αποτελέσματος της ρυθμίσεως''".

Scholarly assessment

Nikos Alivizatos, a constitutional scholar, considered the methods employed by PASOK to elect Sartzetakis in 1985 as "unacceptable," and while he did not blame the change in the presidency in 1985 as the source of "corruption and moral crisis" that became apparent in the following years, he acknowledged that the ousting of Karamanlis caused PASOK "to neglect the rules of the parliamentary game," and signaled that it "would not hesitate to overcome any obstacle in its aim to retain power." In similar lines, Stathis Kalyvas, a political scientist, and Richard Clogg, a historian, note that while the actions by Papandreou did not directly threaten the democratic form of the Constitution, however, they undermined its long-term legitimacy. Takis Pappas, a political scientist, considered the events surrounding Sartzetakis's election as part of PASOK's strategy in the 1980s to bend or even disregard liberal institutions to the will of popular sovereignty that gradually transformed Greece from a liberal democracy based on the Constitution of 1975 into a "populist democracy."

Historians John Koliopoulos and suggested that the crisis was motivated by Papandreou's desire to divert the Greek electorate's attention away from the worsening state of the Greek economy (unemployment increased under PASOK from 2.7% in 1980 to 7.8% in 1985, annual inflation of the order of 20%, widening trade deficits). While Papandreou contended that Karamanlis' removal was necessary for the constitutional revision, Manesis argued the reverse: the constitutional revision was merely a pretext to justify the removal of Karamanlis, which would remind left-leaning voters as the elections were approaching that PASOK remained faithful to its revolutionary left-wing origins.

References

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{{Greek presidential elections

President
March 1985 in Europe
1980s in Greek politics
Konstantinos Karamanlis
Andreas Papandreou
Presidential elections in Greece