Georgios Rallis

Georgios Rallis (Greek Γεώργιος Ράλλης; born December 26, 1918 in Athens, † 15 March 2006) was a Greek politician. He was on May 10, 1980 to October 21, 1981 Prime Minister of Greece.

Life

Origin

Rallis comes from a long-established family whose roots date back to the Byzantine Empire. His grandfather Dimitrios Rallis (1844-1921) was five times briefly Greek Prime Minister (1897, 1903, 1905, 1909 and 1921), his maternal grandfather Georgios Theotokis ( 1844-1916 ), four times ( 1899-1901, 1903, 1903-1904 and from 1905 to 1909. his father was briefly Prime Minister, but not democratically elected but placed only from German occupation.

Career

Rallis was a member of the Conservative Party, was first elected to the Greek Parliament in 1950 and 1954 for the first time a minister in the government of Alexandros Papagos. He joined the Ethniki Enosis Rizospastiki ( National Radical Union, EUA) by Konstantinos Karamanlis and served until 1963 as a minister in his government. After the military coup of 1967 Rallis was arrested and banished to the island Kasos after he had demanded the restoration of democracy. Later he was allowed to leave the country, and he remained until the democratic changes in 1974 in exile.

After his return Rallis was initially for a short time Interior Minister, then Minister at the Office of the Prime Minister in the run of Karamanlis government of national unity. He held that office after the elections on 17 November 1974 in formed by Karamanlis conservative government. In 1976, Rallis also took over the Ministry of Education, which he led until the end of 1977. He directed the education reform and put the abolition of the perceived as artificial katharevousa as an official language and its replacement by the modern Greek vernacular Dimotiki by. In the end of 1977, the newly formed government, which was in turn led by Karamanlis, Rallis had initially held the position of Minister for Coordination, before he became Foreign Minister in 1978. He attended the first Greek Foreign Minister at all, the Soviet Union and worked on improving relations with Bulgaria and Yugoslavia. He also led the accession negotiations with the European Economic Community ( EEC).

As Karamanlis resigned in 1980, the delegates of New Democracy party voted him as the new party chairman and Rallis took over the premiership. During his short tenure Greece joined as the tenth member of the European Economic Community. However, the following year he lost the elections against the charismatic Andreas Papandreou of PASOK and resigned as party chairman. Later Rallis had disagreements with his successor Konstantinos Mitsotakis and was for some time a non-party parliamentarians.

Although Rallis had become prime minister when his party began to lose favor with the voters, he stayed because of his gentleness, his humility and his directness also cross-party popular. He wrote 14 books on politics and modern Greek history and has been a guest of many TV shows for Greek history. On 15 March 2006 he died of heart disease.