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Constantine Mitsotakis (or Konstantinos Mitsotakis) (born October 18 1918), Greek politician, was born in Khania, Crete. Like most Greek politicians, he came from a political family: his father and grandfathers were members of parliament, and the great liberal leader Eleutherios Venizelos was his uncle. As a young man took part in the Cretan resistance against the German occupation. He graduated in law and economics from the University of Athens and was elected to the Greek Parliament in 1946.
As a relative of Venizelos, Mitsotakis was a traditional Greek liberal, and a member of George Papandreou's Centre Union party. But in 1965 he led a group of dissidents known as the "July apostates" who crossed the floor to bring about the fall of Papandreou's government, which earned him the undying hatred of Papandreou loyalists. He was arrested in 1967 by the military junta but managed to escape and lived in exile until his return in 1974.
In 1974 he was re-elected to Parliament as member of George Mavros's revived Centre Union, but in 1978, when the liberals were squeezed out by Andreas Papandreou's PASOK, he joined Constantine Caramanlis's New Democracy party. He served as minister for economic coordination from 1978 to 1980, and as minister for foreign affairs from 1980 to 1981.
The ND government was defeated by PASOK in 1981, and in 1984 Mitsotakis succeeded Evangelos Averoff-Tossizza as ND leader. He and Papandreou dominated Greek politics for the next decade: their mutual dislike dated back to the fall of George Papandreou's government in 1965, and they competed in whipping up Greek nationalist sentiment over the Macedonia question. Papandreou, embroiled in the Bank of Crete scandal, lost his parliamentary majority in the elections of June 1989, but Mitsotakis was unable to form a government. After a period of parliamentary deadlock, fresh elections in April 1990 produced a narrow ND majority, and Mitsotakis became Prime Minister.
Mitsotakis's government moved swiftly to cut government spending, privatise state enterprises and reform the civil service. In foreign policy, Mitsotakis moved to reopen talks on United States bases in Greece and to restore confidence among Greece's economic and political partners. In June 1990, Mitsotakis became the first Greek premier to visit the United States in 26 years. He promised to meet Greece's NATO obligations, to prevent use of Greece as a base for terrorism, and to stop the rhetorical attacks on the United States that had been Papandreou's hallmark. Mitsotakis also supported a new dialogue with Turkey, but made progress on Cyprus a prerequisite for improvement on other issues.
Papandreou, cleared of charges arising from the Bank of Crete scandal, criticised Mitsotakis's government for its economic policies, for not taking a sufficiently Greek nationalist position over Macedonia and Cyprus and for being too pro-American. These issues allowed Papandreou to win the 1993 elections and return to office. Mitsotakis then resigned as ND leader, although he remained the party's honorary chairman.
In January 2004 Mitsotakis announced that he would retire from Parliament at the March 7 elections, 56 years after his first election. His son, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, is an ND Member of Parliament and his daughter, Dora Bakoyannis, is the mayor of Athens and seen as a future party leader. Mitsotakis's main interest outside politics is Cretan antiquities. He developed a large collection of Minoan and other Cretan antiquities, which he has now donated to the Greek state.
| Preceded by: Andreas Papandreou | Prime Ministers of Greece | Followed by: Andreas Papandreou |
