Tribute event for late statesman Constantine Karamanlis

Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, addressing the event, said that the work of Constantine Karamanlis "lives on and inspires us who are his heirs and those who are the descendants of all who fought him."

"We must become the continuers of his work and realise his principles and values and take his legacy further," Samaras said.

Referring to Karamanlis's work, he stressed that "he made surpassings and leaps. He was a man of western culture who was not led away on thirdworld paths. He was the architect of the multifaceted foreign policy that threw bridges in east and West. He knew the country's limits and did not make communication games. He always had the national interest as a compass, he had a vision for the country and looked ahead. He realised that the country's position is in Europe when others were shouting slogans. He embraced all the parties, he legalised them but did not cease to criticise their mistakes. He did not attempt to pose as a pseudo-progressive. He was really progressive and ahead of his time. He was a good captain because he led with a firm hand. He was a leader because he embraced them all. In his first period he had growth as a priority, in the second he had the consolidation of democracy. He disdained the pseudo-cultural makings and detested populism. He combined elements from the Atlantism of (late German chancellor Konrad) Adenauer and (late French president Charles) de Gaulle, he clashed on some occasions, but he never isolated the country. He restored and laid the foundations of parliamentarism. He was the Doric and strict leader who however shed tears for Macedonia."

Establishing correlations with the present, Samaras said that "the more bold reforms we make, the more openings we make to the international environment, the more we respect his legacy. We honour his legacy when we keep Greece in Europe when some thought we were finished, when we implement the law, when we try to achieve our targets for fiscal adjustment, when others only respect it with words".

The event was also attended by President of the Republic Karolos Papoulias, Archbishop of Athens and All Greece Ieronymos, Parliament President Evangelos Meimarakis, main opposition SYRIZA party leader Alexis Tsipras, the leaders of the government coalition parties Evangelos Venizelos and Fotis Kouvelis, former president Kostis Stephanopoulos, former prime ministers Constantine Mitsotakis, Costas Simitis, Costas Karamanlis accompanied hy his wife, George Papandreou and Panayiotis Pikrammenos.

PASOK leader

Adressing the same event, PASOK party leader Evangelos Venizelos expressed his certainty that late Greek statesman Constantine Karamanlis "would tell us today that it is a common obligation of all political forces of the constitutional arch to safeguard the minimum of our understanding and political culture as one of the basic conditions for the country's recovery in conditions of national unity and social cohesion."

Venizelos said that the three basic historical developments linked to Constantine Karamanlis, namely the 1974 transition to Democracy, the definite solution of the country's regime problem and Greece's accession to the EU "have been long ago and definitely become a common national possession."

Venizelos underlined that Constantine Karamanlis, "who had the rare privilege to cover, as a political leader, a period of around fifty years, has nothing to fear from this historical evaluation in process."

"Although there will always be questions and doubts over this or that of his options, the difficulties that he had to face both during the first phase and the second phase of his premiership, as well as his adherence to Europe and fiscal discipline are now better understood," Venizelos added.

DIMAR leader

“The legacy left behind by the leader of the liberal party in the country’s political realm is enormous: What Constantine Karamanlis believed in and practiced for 60 years was his clear-cut views, a fine political culture, respect for other politicians’ positions and that politics must be in the service of the general good,” Democratic Left (DIMAR) party leader Fotis Kouvelis told the event.

Kouvelis in his address praised the role of Constantine Karamanlis in the restoration of democracy and political normalcy after the fall of the dictatorship (1974), the vision and realization for the equal participation of Greece in the then European Economic Community (EEC), as well the legalization of the Communist Left.

SYRIZA leader

Main opposion Radical Left Coalition (SYRIZA) party leader Alexis Tsipras underlined the contribution of Constantine Karamanlis in the laying of the foundations of democracy in Greece after the dictatorship.

According to Tsipras, Karamanlis was a "distinguished personality of modern Greece" and also reminded of a reference by late Communist Party of Greece secretary general Harilaos Florakis who had termed Karamanlis as an "important leader of his class".

Tsipras said that Karamanlis was the politician who "achieved a rare political and personal surpassing".

"He succeeded in overcoming the asphyxiating limits that the civil war and the foreign protectors had imposed on both the country and his party. The status of the separation of the Greeks into nationalists and not. The practices of prosecutions, police unaccountability and the state of siege that characterised Greece until 1974. Heightening of course, with the seven-year dictatorship," the main opposition leader said.

The SYRIZA leader fully separated Karamanlis's activity before the dictatorship and the way with which he ruled the country in the first years of the post-junta era. He analysed the surpassing he did from the Left's point of view. Tsipras said that this surpassing, of great importance for democracy and the country, constituted a brave option since he was the leader who emerged in that post-cil war political, social and democratic half-light. "All political forces, we must safeguard this surpassing and not forget that he was the same person who was over a series of years the strong person of an authoritarian regime, that had been built in international and internal conditions that we all know," he said.

As regards the post-junta era Karamanlis, Tsipras said that he pursued and succeeded in widening the limits of his party. He listened to the new democratic needs and mainly the historical need for a stable democratic legality to be built in the country that will protect elementary rights, restrict political separations to a minimum and secure the smooth alternation in power.

From this point of view, he added, Karamanlis "did not only contribute decisively for the practices and ideas of other eras to be overcome, which he had also served and indeed in a protagonist way. But he surpassed, in a sense, his very self, and this is, I believe, what renders his personality distinguished, even for his opponents."