March 20, 1958
MITSOTAKIS: Speaking in Parliament on the new electoral law, member of the Liberals Constantine Mitsotakis said the country continued to be under a regime of interventions from above that obstructs the normal development of political life. Furthermore, he said the only way for the country to escape from the vicious circle in which it finds itself and for Greek political mores to really calm down is to hold an election, at some point, with the system of proportional representation. He himself would prefer the single-member constituency system with 150 deputies. He noted that it constituted a basic irregularity that the royal intervention did not restrict itself to the decision about whether the country should go to elections but went as far as, through the government that it appoints, to dictate the voting of an electoral system… Mitsotakis argued that our political life was being conducted between two clashing rocks, that is, between nepotism and popular fronts, and that nepotism was the best recruiter and ally of those fronts. With proportional representation, the real strength of parties would become evident, including the Communist Party if it were allowed to take part on its own rather than under the present disguise of the United Democratic Left (EDA).
