Tassoulas: Nomination for president – ‘a supreme honour and responsibility’; first vote to be held on January 25
Responding to news of his nomination as ruling New Democracy’s candidate for President of the Hellenic Republic, Parliament President Costas Tassoulas on Wednesday said that his selection by the prime minister “is both a supreme honour and responsibility.”
He simultaneously announced the immediate start of the procedures for the election of the President of the Republic, with the first vote to be held next Saturday, January 25.
Tassoulas took to the podium of the plenary session of the parliament to the warm applause of New Democracy MPs, immediately after Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis announced the party’s selection. He noted that he had chosen to make his statement to the National Delegation to honour the vote of the people of Ioannina, who have elected him as a deputy for 26 years.
“The proposal of the President of New Democracy and Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis for the office of President of the Republic, is for me both a supreme honour and responsibility,” Tassoulas said.
“As we have already entered upon insistently turbulent and uncertain times – we see this both near us and more widely in the world – the safeguarding of our national unity and the harmonious operation of the state’s authorities become even more valuable conditions for the stability and prosperity of the country. And it is precisely these conditions, the unity and harmonious functioning of the institutions, that are mainly due to the mission that the Constitution entrusts to the President of the Republic and that’s why the oath [the president] gives here in the Parliament includes all the above, along with the defence of our national sovereignty and of the Greek people’s rights,” he said.
“As Parliament President, I am immediately setting in motion the procedures for the election of the President of the Hellenic Republic, with the first date for a roll-call vote on Saturday, 25 January,” Tassoulas announced.
arliament President Constantine Tassoulas was nominated for the office of President of the Hellenic Republic on Wednesday by Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis.
A lawyer by profession, Constantine Tassoulas was born in Ioannina in 1959, is married and has two children. Since 2000, he has been elected as a member of parliament with the New Democracy party. In 2007, he was appointed Deputy Minister of National Defence, in 2010 he was elected Secretary General of the New Democracy Parliamentary Group, in 2014 he was appointed Minister of Culture and Sports until January 2015, while in 2018 he was appointed General Rapporteur of the New Democracy party for the Constitutional Revision.
In 2019, he was elected President of the Hellenic Parliament, a position to which he was re-elected in May 2023 and for a third time in July 2023.
Political/Social Activities
He was the private secretary of the late honorary president of New Democracy Evangelos Averoff-Tositsa from 1981 until 1990 and a special advisor to the Ministries of National Economy, Trade and Agriculture (1989-1990).
He then served as president of the Export Promotion Organisation (OPE) from 1990 to 1993.
He was elected a municipal councillor of the Municipality of Kifissia in 1990. In 1994, he was elected mayor of Kifissia.
In June 2013, he was appointed president of the “Constantine Karamanlis” Democracy Institute.
Source: AMNA
