Theodoros Pangalos died

The famous PASOK figure, former minister and politician with one of the longest political careers in Greek history, Theodoros Pangalos, has died at the age of 84.

This was reported by his family through the former minister’s Twitter account.

Ο αγαπημένος μας Θόδωρος Πάγκαλος έφυγε σήμερα από κοντά μας, ήσυχα στο σπίτι του, έχοντας δίπλα του την οικογένειά του και τους στενούς του συνεργάτες.
Καλό ταξίδι λατρεμένε μας.
Θα σε θυμόμαστε πάντα με αγάπη.

— Theodoros Pangalos (@tpangalos) May 31, 2023

Our beloved Thodoros Pangalos left us peacefully at home today, surrounded by his family and loved ones. Happy journey, our beloved. We will always remember you with love.

Biography
Theodoros Pangalos was born in Elefsina on August 17, 1938. On his paternal side, he came from a military family: his father was a senior officer and one of the first Greek Air Force pilots, and his grandfather was a general and dictator in 1925, Theodoros Pangalos.

He graduated from the elite Varvakio High School in Athens and studied law and economics at the University of Athens. Having received a scholarship from the French government, in 1973 he was awarded a doctorate in economics from the Paris 1 University (Panthéon-Sorbonne).

Pangalos participated in the anti-dictatorial struggle, and in 1968 the dictatorial regime deprived him of his Greek citizenship, which he restored after the fall of the dictatorship.

At an early age, he became involved in the student trade union movement, participated in various student groups and was one of the founders of the Grigoris Lambrakis Youth Democratic Movement, which was renamed the Grigoris Lambrakis Youth, as well as the left-wing organization Democratic Student Resistance.

In 1978, he ran for mayor of the city of Elefsina and finished third. As a young man he was also active in the KKE, and in the post-independence period he was one of the leading members of the wider centre-left faction of the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK).

He was first elected to the Parliament of Attica in 1981 for PASOK, and has been elected in every election in which he has run since then. He was last elected in 2009 when he was appointed Deputy Prime Minister of Greece, a position he retained during both reshuffles in Papandreou’s government. He remained Deputy Prime Minister during the term of the transitional government of Loukis Papademos. He retired from active politics ahead of the May 2012 elections.

https://twitter.com/EFSYNTAKTON/status/1663900217056411648

Quotes and cases that left their mark on him

T. Pangalos was a controversial personality. From time to time he made various statements that provoked a reaction, but one of the most characteristic, of course, was “we all ate” (“μαζί τα φάγαμε”), which he uttered to justify the memorandums and distribute the blame for the way the treasury was emptied countries.

Although the main “blot” on his political career was undoubtedly the arrest of a Kurd Abdullah Ocalan, founding leader of the PKK, by the Turkish intelligence services. T. Pangalos, then the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Greece, agreed to transfer the Turkish fugitive to the Greek embassy in Kenya and, in cooperation with the Kenyan authorities, ensured Ocalan’s crossing to the Netherlands. The case ended in a fiasco that not only landed the leader of the Kurdish PKK in jail, but also sparked a political crisis in Greece that led to the resignation of three ministers, including Pangalos.

Another major political fiasco in his career was the cynical response he gave to the then Chief of the General Staff, Admiral Christos Liberis, in 1996 during the Imia crisis over the Greek flag. As the Chief of the General Staff later said, when he asked Theodoros Pangalos what they would say to the people about the removal of the flag from Imia, Pangalos cynically replied: “You will say that the flag was blown away by the wind!”

Years later, Pangalos, in his book, accused the Chief of the General Staff, Admiral Liberis, that “he literally lost his temper” and that “he clearly yielded to the circumstances.” Especially about the flag, he wrote in his book: “Patriots of all stripes and various harmless” Greeks “considered the removal of the flag of the mayor of Kalymnos from the islet Imiya and its transfer “in honor” of the outgoing detachment is a great betrayal. The decision was taken exclusively by the participants in the discussion in the Politburo.

“True, I advocated the removal of the flag and said that the symbolic flag is not some kind of cloth with national colors that any person hangs out wherever and whenever he pleases under any circumstances. The symbolic flag, and even under such circumstances, – this is an official flag, with a solid base, firmly fixed, protected and controlled“.

In the local elections in October 1994, he fought for the post of mayor of Athens against Dimitris Avramopoulos, who enjoyed the support of the New Democracy party. Arrogantly referring to the young politician, he called him “Mr Nothing“. However, in the second round, D. Avramopoulos received 54.37% of the vote and was elected mayor of Athens. “I don’t regret what I said during the election campaign. Politics is a wild sport. This is not basketball“, he said after that.

Nevertheless, his expression “μαζί τα φάγαμε” became the most famous, leaving a bad memory of T. Pangalos in the history of modern Greece.

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