Greece’s conservative Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has proposed the speaker of the Greek parliament, Konstantinos Tasoulas, for the office of president. The parliament in Athens will vote on a new head of state on 25 January since Katerina Sakellaropoulou’s term in office is coming to an end. Greek commentators discuss Tasoulas’s political orientation.
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The strong call the shots
Mitsotakis is putting his own interests and those of his party above all else, criticises the left-wing website TVXS:
“The prime minister opted for a candidate from the right of his party in order to rally his party’s right-wing and far-right supporters. The recently voiced demand that a centre-left candidate be proposed to balance the political situation is naive. Kyriakos Mitsotakis and the Nea Dimokratia party are the strong players in the political game, and the strong always impose their terms and what they consider advantageous for them. The opposition cannot avoid the realisation that it is weak under the current political circumstances.”
Playing it safe
Tasoulas will offer little resistance to the government, website News247 predicts:
“Mitsotakis chose Tasoulas to stem the flow of voters to the right on the one hand, and to prevent potential anti-government interventions by an ‘uncontrollable’ president on key issues such as Greek-Turkish relations, the Tempi train accident, and wiretapping on the other. … The president’s limited constitutional powers don’t allow for either institutional conflicts nor attacks on the government. However, any public intervention by the new president against government policy could lead to a strong anti-government climate, something the prime minister is keen to avoid.”