| THE RISE AND FALL OF
PAPANDREOU AND PASOK
By the election of 1981, electoral momentum had shifted away from
an uninspired ND to the promise of change offered by a newly
moderate PASOK. For the next eight years, Papandreou applied his
program to society and the economy, with mixed results.
In 1980 Karamanlis elevated himself to the presidency, leaving
the lackluster Georgios Rallis as the incumbent prime minister in
the next year's election. In the election of October 1981, PASOK and
Papandreou swept into power with 48 percent of the popular vote and
172 seats in parliament. The ND, which could not match Papandreou's
charisma or the novelty of PASOK's program, finished a distant
second with 36 percent of the vote and 115 seats, and the KKE came
in third with 11 percent and thirteen seats.
Between the 1977 and 1981 elections, PASOK and its leader had
continued the move away from an initial image as a Marxism-based,
class-oriented party, in order to reassure centrist voters. The
"privileged" class against which Papandreou ran in 1981
had shrunk considerably to a small number of Greece's most wealthy
citizens. The societal results of the "change" were left
deliberately vague. The election result meant that, for the first
time in Greek history, an explicitly left-wing party held the reigns
of government. The transformation from authoritarian rule to
democracy was finally complete.
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