On April 22, 1980, Konstantinos Karamanlis, founder and all-powerful leader of the ND, undisputed leader of the right-wing faction, did something that, as it turned out, ensured the historical longevity of his party. He convened his Parliamentary Group, in which he announced his decision to resign from the ND leadership and run for the Presidency of the Republic. Then he did something else, particularly rare for a charismatic leader: not giving in to the temptation to continue to direct, even indirectly, his party, Karamanlis did not even try to nominate a successor, leaving the resolution of the matter to the Parliamentary Group, without any of his own intervention. It was a necessary step, as he explained at the time, for the creation of “long-lived principled parties” in the country instead of the personal and usually moribund parties of the past.
In the years and decades that followed from 1980 until today, the ND was ruled by seven elected leaders, five of whom managed to rule the country as prime ministers. Among them, the New Democratic leaders were very different, both in terms of ideology and style of government. In some interesting way, in fact, they appeared on the historical scene as pairs of opposites. George Rallis was a moderate conservative, committed to liberal values and the European perspective of the country, while his successor, Evangelos Averof, was an old-fashioned democrat, representative of an ideologically intransigent and aggressive Right. Konstantinos Mitsotakis was the first party leader who dared to lead the ND towards the liberal Center, with a clear preference for the free market economy and privatization, while Miltiadis Evert, who succeeded him in the leadership of the ND, was a genuine representative of the so-called “people’s Right’ and supporter of the big, clientelistic and interventionist state. Kostas Karamanlis, although he managed power for a sufficient period of time, proved to be a timid reformer of the party and a reluctant reformer of the state, while Antonis Samaras, the next leader of the ND, combined social conservatism and patriotic nationalism with the economic liberalism demanded by the country’s creditors . In 2016, the election of Kyriakos Mitsotakis as the eighth leader had the effect of turning ND into a typically center-right party of European standards with a technocratic understanding of politics and an innate tendency towards political liberalism.
Naturally, due to the ideological and political differences between the candidates, the elections for the leader of the ND often took place in a climate of suspicion, in which personal bitterness and sometimes strong hostility manifested themselves. However, none of these elections caused a split at the top of the party or a dissolution of its party base. Only in two cases did defeated candidates decide to leave the parent ND and create a new, rival party. Several months after his internal party defeat by Konstantinos Mitsotakis, Kostis Stephanopoulos left the ND and founded the Democratic Renewal (DI.ANA), while, many years later, after its own internal party defeat and subsequent deletion from the party, Dora Bakoyannis founded in 2010 the Democratic Alliance (DIS.SY) movement. In both cases the parties founded by the “renegade” ND politicians proved to be stillborn and eventually disappeared. As Averov, who in addition to being a political leader was also a tcheliga, had put it earlier, “the sheep that leave the fold are eaten by the wolf”.
In its time, Averof’s parable was popularized, but, as usually happens in such cases, for the wrong reasons. If we were to paraphrase it today in terms of modern political science, instead of pastoral language, we would simply say that small ideological groups that leave a large and solidly structured party do not have significant potential for political survival. Which leads to a final and extremely important question: what was it that made the ND such a solid and successful multi-collegiate party – the only one that survives as such to this day?
The term “multi-party party” refers to political parties that appeal to voters from various walks of life and express several ideological tendencies, with the primary goal of maximizing votes and winning power. Despite their ideological breadth, however, these kinds of parties are anything but amorphous. They are based on specific guiding political principles, which their party leaders embrace, since if they abandon them, the party is in danger of collapse. ND avoided this risk, because the charismatic Karamanlis left the electoral arena in time, leaving behind an impersonal party. Since then, this party has proved to be long-lived, precisely because it already possessed conceptually concrete, historically tested and politically durable principles: the belief in democratic parliamentarism, the preference for constitutional liberalism and the firm choice of the European course for the country.•
* Mr. Takis S. Pappas is a political scientist and writer. His new book, Paradoxi chora: Why Greece lags behind Ireland and Portugal and what can we learn from them, is published by Pataki publications.
2024-10-04 13:29:34