Dora Bakoyannis
Mayor of Athens, Greece
By Andrew Stevens, Political Editor

Athens is said to be the ‘cradle of democracy’ by virtue of the city state which governed during the time of Aristotle, though women and slaves during that era might have disagreed with the description. Today’s Greek capital is in fact governed by a female mayor whose deceptive appearance closer resembles an actress or television presenter than a politician. Mayor Bakoyannis was elected as mayor of Athens in October 2002 with the largest majority in the city’s history. In 2005, Dora Bakoyannis won the World Mayor Award. In February 2006, she was appointed Greece's first female foreign minister.

Born in 1954 as Dora Mitsotakis, eldest child of Constantine Mitsotakis who later went on to be Greece’s prime minister in the early 1990s, she studied politics at the University of Athens and in Munich, Germany. During the period of military dictatorship under the regime of The Colonels which lasted between 1967 and 1974, the family lived in exile in Paris. They returned in 1974 and Dora was married to Pavlos Bakoyannis, a politician. She then embarked on a career as a civil servant and worked in several government ministries.

In 1984, her father Constantine Mitsotakis became leader of Greece’s centre right party New Democracy and she was appointed his head of staff. New Democracy had played an important role in the transition from the period of military dictatorship, winning the first free elections in 1974 under the leadership of Constantine Caramanlis, who had served as Prime Minister during Greece’s post-war period under the former monarchy, between 1955 and 1963. Caramanlis’ New Democracy-led government phased out the last remnants of dictatorship and took Greece into the European Economic Community.

Mitsotakis himself was from one of Greece’s main political dynasties, his father and grandfathers were members of parliament and his uncle was Eleftherios Venizelos, leader of the old Liberal Party and prime minister in several governments during the first half of the 20th century. Mitsotakis began his career in the Centre Union party of George Papandreou but resigned in 1965 in order to bring about the end of the Papandreou government, which was destabilised by both the monarchy and the military. After failing to be elected in 1974, he succeeded in 1977 and served as economic co-ordination minister and then foreign affairs minister in the New Democracy government of Caramanlis, which was defeated in the 1981 election by the Pan-Hellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) of Andreas Papandreou, son of former prime minister George. Mitsotakis and Papandreou dominated Greek politics in the 1980s, with Mitsotakis leading the first New Democracy government for a decade in 1990.

The Mitsotakis premiership saw Dora Bakoyannis appointed as a junior minister then minister of culture. In 1989 however, the November 17 terrorist organisation assassinated her husband Pavlos, a New Democracy parliamentarian. November 17 took their name from a student uprising of 1973 against the military dictatorship and operated in a similar manner to other European revolutionary cells such as Germany’s Red Army Fraction and Italy’s Red Brigades. In 2003, her husband’s assassins were convicted of a number of political murders that took place over the last decade and a half, including the murder of a British diplomat in 2000.

The Mitsotakis government pursued a more Atlanticist foreign policy than its PASOK predecessor and liberalised the Greek economy, privatising state enterprises and reforming the civil service. Mitsotakis lost the Greek general election and the leadership of New Democracy in 1993 with Costas Caramanlis, nephew of former prime minister and party founder Constantine, assuming the post in 1997. In 2000 Caramanlis appointed Bakoyannis as the party’s foreign affairs spokesperson and picked her to fight the Athens mayoral election in 2002. Having asserted itself in the local elections and taken the city, New Democracy returned to power on the national stage in 2002, with Costas Caramanlis becoming the youngest prime minister in Greek history.

Bakoyannis had the advantage of the city already being chosen in 1997 to host the 2004 Olympic games when she entered office in January 2003. She presides over a capital beset by a number of environmental problems, with rapid growth seeing 45% of the Greek population resident in the metropolitan area around the city. Massive investment has eased some of the transportation issues, with the Athens Metro being one of the best in the world. The capital is governed by 54 separate municipalities, each with an elected council and mayor. Mayor Bakoyanis is head of the largest municipality in metropolitan Athens, which has 900,000 residents to its name.

The mayor’s telegenity and manner are side issues, though she frequently tops polls as the most popular politician in Greece. She has also gone beyond the Olympic legacy and used her vision to transform the city and make tangible changes to benefit its residents, with plaudits from supporters and opponents alike. In 2003, she was chosen by Italian socialist politician and then European Commission president Romano Prodi to serve on his commission on sustainability.

The mayor relies on her slogan, “I will do my best”. Bakoyannis is spoken of as a future party leader, apt given her dynastic credentials. She married for the second time in 1998, to businessman Isidorous Kouvelous, and has two children from her first marriage.