Tassulas Elected as New President of Greece and Speaker of Parliament

Konstantinos Tasoulas, Speaker of the Parliament, has been elected as the new president of Greece.

Konstantinos Tasoulas, elected as the new President of Greece. Photo by Xinhua Yonhap News.

According to AFP, the Greek Parliament approved candidate Tasoulas as the next president after the fourth round of voting on the 12th (local time).

Out of 276 sitting members, 160 voted in favor. The remaining members either abstained or left the parliamentary chamber.

Greece elects its president through an indirect system where the prime minister nominates a candidate and the parliament approves. To gain approval in the first and second rounds of voting, a two-thirds majority of the total 300 seats is required. In the third round, the threshold lowers to 180 votes, and in the fourth round, it further decreases to 151 votes.

Tasoulas will officially take office as president on the 13th of next month, succeeding Katerina Sakellaropoulou, Greece’s first female president in history.

Tasoulas stated, "It is a great honor, but above all, I feel a great sense of responsibility," adding, "I will do my best to foster a spirit of unity necessary for Greece to move forward amid geopolitical turmoil and war."

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said in a statement, "I am confident that the newly appointed President Tasoulas will successfully fulfill the important role of being a symbol of national unity and ensuring the stability of democracy and continuity of the constitution."

In Greece’s parliamentary system, the president holds the constitutional status and authority as the head of state and head of the executive branch but generally performs a symbolic role. The term is five years, with the possibility of one re-election.

The new president, Tasoulas, is known for actively pursuing the repatriation of the Parthenon Marbles held by the British Museum during his tenure as Minister of Culture from 2014 to 2015.

However, opposition parties have opposed his nomination as president, alleging that he concealed evidence during the handling of the 2023 train head-on collision disaster that claimed 57 lives. Kostas Tzikalas, spokesperson for the main opposition party Movement for Change (PASOK-KINAL), criticized the nomination, saying it was customary to nominate opposition figures as presidential candidates and added, "Today will go down in history as the day one of the few traditions of our political system was broken."