1985 Greek presidential election

After coming to power in 1981, Papandreou began implementing an ambitious social, economic, and foreign agenda. Despite many achievements in updating the Greek laws, especially on the social issues, he failed to address the mounting structural problems of the Greek economy with trade deficits widening, unemployment increasing from 2.7% in 1980 to 7.8% in 1985, and annual inflation reaching 20%.^[1][2] Public perception of Greece's economy worsened sharply during this period.^[a][4]

On 6 March 1985, New Democracy announced that it would support Konstantinos Karamanlis's second term as President, and the communist party (KKE) declared that it would put forward its own candidate.^[5][6] The press anticipated that Papandreou would also support Karamanlis,^[7] having previously assured Karamanlis his support in person.^[8] However, Papandreou changed his mind at the last moment, siding with the left wing of PASOK, which did not want Karamanlis, and instead backed Christos Sartzetakis, who was a Supreme Court judge known for his principled handling of the 1963 murder of left-wing deputy Grigoris Lambrakis and viewed favorably by the Left. Sartzetakis's investigation became the main plot in Costas Gavras's 1969 movie Z based on the novel of Vassilis Vassilikos.^[7][8]

Papandreou announced this at the PASOK Central Committee on 9 March, surprising some of his ministers, much of his party's rank-and-file, and even Sartzetakis himself, who had not been told in advance.^[7] Later on, it was revealed that the supposedly spontaneous change of mind was to camouflage Papandreou's long-held constitutional designs since Sartzetakis not only knew about it well in advance but also that there had been two other judicial figures who rejected Papandreou's offer.^[9] At the same time, Papandreou announced plans for a constitutional reform, which rekindled the debate about the form of the republic and further polarized the political environment by damaging the consensus between the period's two dominant political parties, PASOK and New Democracy.^[10]

Scholars considered the proposal unnecessary and autocratic, reflecting the weakness of the Greek political system.^[11][12] Foreign observers were also worried that Papandreou unleashed a high-stakes gamble over the president question with potentially dire consequences for Greece and its allies. An electoral weakened Papandreou might lead to a collaboration with the communist party to form a government, in which communists shaping Greece's foreign policy and disrupting the communications in North Atlantic Treaty Organization influence the balance of power in the Mediterranean.^[13]

Papandreou argued that it would be illogical for Karamanlis, who had influenced much of the Constitution of 1975, to preside over any constitutional reform, and informed him of this via his deputy, Antonios Livanis.^[14][15] In response, Karamanlis resigned from the Presidency on 10 March 1985, two weeks before the termination of his term, and the Speaker of the Hellenic Parliament, Ioannis Alevras of PASOK, filling in as acting president.^[14] Mitsotakis accused Papandreou of creating a constitutional crisis to remove Karamanlis from office to establish a totalitarian constitution.^[16]

Sartzetakis was the sole candidate since the political opposition from New Democracy, led by Mitsotakis, abstained. According to the Constitution of 1975, up to three rounds of a parliamentary vote were permitted for presidential candidates; the first two rounds required more than 200 votes out of 300 members of parliament, and the third, 180 votes out of 300.^[17] If all three rounds failed, then new elections would be held. Having expelled six PASOK MPs for criticizing him, he could only rely on 164 of his own MPs, 12 MPs from KKE, and five independent MPs (about 181).^[18] The opposition raised the issue of whether Alevras should be precluded from the presidential vote and his deputy's rights while acting president, as Article 30 of the Constitution of 1975 stated that the president's office was incompatible with other offices. On the advice of Grigorios Kasimatis [el], PASOK argued that there was no explicit provision in the constitution and put it to the PASOK-controlled Parliament, which allowed it.^[19] PASOK deputy Agamemnon Koutsogiorgas later argued in Parliament that the issue raised by constitutional scholars on Alevras' ineligibility to vote due to Article 30 in the Constitution applied only to elected presidents and would not have applied to Alevras.^[19]

Portraits of (left) Andreas Papandreou and (right) Konstantinos Mitsotakis, who had an oral confrontation in the Parliament regarding the constitutional violations by Papandreou.

The first two rounds, held on 17 and 23 March, failed to elect Sartzetakis. The elections were held amid high political tension; at one point, a New Democracy deputy briefly grabbed the ballot box.^[18] The third round took place on 29 March amid chanting PASOK supporters surrounding the building.^[20] Like in previous rounds, colored ballots (in blue color for Sartzetakis) and semi-transparent envelopes were used,^[21][18][22] which led New Democracy chairman Mitsotakis to accuse Papandreou of violating the constitutional principle of secret ballot (Article 32).^[17][23] His concern was dismissed because PASOK controlled the majority in the Parliament, prompting Mitsotakis to confront Papandreou. Mitsotakis claimed Papandreou had no respect for the Parliament, and Papandreou responded, with Mitsotakis' role in the Iouliana of 1965 in mind, that the latter was the last person entitled to speak about respect.^[18] Despite vigorous protests from the opposition, PASOK members used colored ballots under strict surveillance to spot potential defectors.^[23]

In the third round of voting on 29 March, Papandreou's party lost the support of two MPs, who Papandreou accused of taking bribes from Mitsotakis' party. Sartzetakis received 180 votes, which was the minimum stipulated by the constitution, and Alevras, as Speaker of the Parliament, cast the decisive vote.^[20] Mitsotakis denounced the vote as illegal, vowing that he would bring the legality of the process to the Council of State if New Democracy won the upcoming election.^[24] With Sartzetakis as president, Papandreou formally submitted the proposals for constitutional amendments by adding to the previous one the removal of a secret ballot for president.^[25]

Both parties continued their confrontations during the campaign for the June election, where political polarization reached new heights.^[27] In the event, PASOK was re-elected with 45.82% of the vote, losing approximately 2.3% from 1981, while New Democracy increased its share of the vote by 4.98% to 40.84%.^[28] Papandreou's gamble worked to his benefit because he gained from far-left voting blocks covering the losses from the centrist voters, and appealed to socialist voters who rejected Karamanlis's perceived hindrance of PASOK's policies.^[9][29]

After the election results, Mitsotakis accepted Sartzetakis as president and the head of state.^[30] Despite the political legitimacy of the president, the case also reached the courts. The plenary session of the Council of State ruled that the direct judicial review of the election of the President was inadmissible,^[31] however, the Athens One-member Magistrates' Court ruled in passing that the election of the President was "irregular" and "amounted to an abrogation of popular sovereignty".^[b] The court also considered that the subsequent political legitimacy (following the victory of PASOK in the 1985 election) did not negate the unconstitutionality of the act.^[c] The latter ruling is considered by constitutional scholar Christos Papastylianos as an example of the courts being able to deem an action as unconstitutional but unable to prevent it.^[34] Papandreou's constitutional proposals took effect in 1986.^[35]

Having secured a comfortable majority and removed previous constitutional guardrails, Papandreou had no effective opposition.^[36] His government applied to the EEC for a $1.75 billion loan to deal with the widening foreign trade deficit (8.7% of GDP).^[37][38] Papandreou touted the loan as a life savior for the economy of Greece because if they had not, then the International Monetary Fund would have imposed more severe austerity measures.^[39] However, in 1987 Papandreou reversed course and Greek economy started to fall behind in terms of convergence with EEC goals and economic competitiveness.^{[40][38][41][42]}

Papandreou's electoral dominance frustrated the opposition parties. In New Democracy, leadership concerns were raised despite the increased share of the vote,^[d] leading to Mitsotakis's resignation but he got reelected in the following party congress.^[43] His former rival for the leadership, Konstantinos Stephanopoulos, abstained from the vote and subsequently established a new political party, Democratic Renewal, taking nine New Democracy's MPs with him.^[43] Communist parties, which lost support, fueled broader resentment toward PASOK's authoritarianism and concentration of power, while at the same time, it utilized the Left's ideology and voting power.^[44] This tension surfaced in the local elections of October 1986 [el], when the KKE refused to back PASOK in Athens, Piraeus, and Thessaloniki, enabling New Democracy to gain ground in a surprising and ideologically unlikely alignment that PASOK denounced as an "unholy alliance".^[e][46] The concentration of power became increasingly personalized around one person, Papandreou,^[47] which was amplified in the public perception by the mounting corruption scandals, especially the Koskotas and Yugoslav corn affairs. The scandals drew common criticism from both the right and the left, culminating after the June 1989 elections in a coalition government tasked with investigating PASOK's corruption (known as "katharsis") and leading to Papandreou's indictment.^[48]

Nikos Alivizatos, a constitutional scholar, considered the methods employed by PASOK to elect Sartzetakis in 1985 "unacceptable," and arguing that although blame the change in the presidency in 1985 did not cause the "corruption and moral crisis" that became apparent in the following years, the ousting of Karamanlis caused PASOK "to neglect the rules of the parliamentary game"^[49] and signaled that it "would not hesitate to overcome any obstacle in its aim to retain power."^[50] In similar lines, Richard Clogg and political scientist Stathis Kalyvas noted that while the actions by Papandreou did not directly threaten the democratic form of the Constitution but undermined its long-term legitimacy.^[23][30] Takis Pappas, a political scientist, considered the events surrounding Sartzetakis's election as part of PASOK's strategy in the 1980s to bend or even disregard liberal institutions to the will of popular sovereignty^[51] that transformed Greece from a liberal democracy based on the Constitution of 1975 into a "populist democracy."^[52]

While Papandreou contended that Karamanlis' removal was necessary for the constitutional revision, contemporary constitutional scholar Aristovoulos Manesis [el] argued the reverse that the constitutional revision was merely a pretext to justify the removal of Karamanlis, which would remind left-leaning voters, as the elections were approaching, that PASOK remained faithful to its revolutionary left-wing origins.^[53] Kevin Featherstone argued that Papandreou instigated a constitutional crisis, centered on the presidential election, just before the 1985 elections to divert the Greek electorate's attention away from the economic decline.^[54]