President of the Hellenic Republic Constantine Tassoulas conveyed a message of unity during his address at the annual reception for the restoration of democracy, now in its 51st anniversary, on Thursday.
In his address, the president also highlighted extensively the role of statesman Konstantinos Karamanlis following the restoration of democracy, and the challenges he faced to lead Greece’s transition to democracy.
This year’s anniversary provides an opportunity to remember historical events and assess their importance today, “reflecting on the constant dialog between past and present,” he said, in order to better understand current challenges and their management in an increasingly uncertain world.
Tassoulas particularly noted the seven-year dictatorship’s role in Greece’s regression and in the Turkish invasion and division on Cyprus, “an open wound, with Limassol the last divided capital in Europe.” In returning to Greece on July 23, 1974, Karamanlis was faced with managing “the difficult transition to democracy and the management of a national crisis in terms of Cyprus,” he underlined, with “a stormy rate of developments.” The two strategic decisions Karamanlis took to support the new type of government and restore democratic institutions was to reorganize the army, “which had been seriously undermined by the bad management of the junta,” and to promote Greece’s accession to the European Union, which it joined in 1981. These established the foundations for a stabler Greece with a role in the Western world, Tassoulas stressed.
Greece’s speedy transition to democracy surprised even the most optimistic observants, the Greek president said. “The basic ingredient of success was Konstantinos Karamanlis’ persistence on unity in the domestic front, cultivating a mild political climate, and avoiding the tensions that were a chronic feature of Greek political history. After all, the possible revival of old political clashes could have derailed the entire project of democratization,” Tassoulas noted.
In its second fifty-year history since the restoration of democracy, the institutional framework established in 1974-1975 has proven its resilience, as did the strategic decisions taken at the time for Greece’s international role. “The repeated crises of recent years and the political acrimony that unfortunately continues in several cases to describe our political life have not managed to seriously shake the post-junta building,” Tassoulas said, and called for continued stability through unity and international esteem.
“With solidarity in great and important things that should unite us, stability domestically, and international esteem, we will be able to overcome dangers cropping up before us every time,” Tassoulas underlined.
