“One Mitsotakis is enough in politics”. This title was chosen by Yannis Vlastarisinitiator and founder of the magazine “Epsilon” of “Eleftherotypias”, for his interview – then a student in the USA – Kyriakou Mitsotakisin 1992. The sequel was unpredictable for both.
The militant knitter, tough trade unionist of the Panspuadastik in the Politics of Law and for 20 years director of the “Sunday Free Press” was at the Maximos Palace in 2019, surprising even himself.
“Dorakis”
Kyriakos Mitsotakis had an image of journalist Yiannis Vlastaris long before he met him. From him Pavlos Bakoyanniswith whom they collaborated and were associated in the magazine “ENA”, and by Dorato his relationship with which he owed the nickname “Dorakis” that was stuck on him during the “Eleftherotypia” period by his colleagues who considered him “crypto-right”. Some expensive tastes and associations with elite circles made him disliked by the most radical part of the staff of the historic newspaper and certainly by the editor, with whom they had clashed fiercely.
Mr. Mitsotakis first asked him to work together when he became president of the ND, in 2016. Until the elections, he was close to him from a safe distance, sending notes exclusively to him and discussing with him without the presence of third parties, at his house, some afternoons – one drinking tea and the other whiskey. Finally, after Mr. Mitsotakis assumed the prime ministership in 2019, he agreed to officially become his logographer because he believed in him – and still believes in him.
Otherwise, he has not fully adapted to the rules of power. He has no driver or police escort and is the only member of the prime minister’s staff who never wears a tie. Sometimes he joins the “morning coffee” online because he finds it difficult to wake up early and the prime minister tolerates it perfectly.
On his first day at Maximos, he addressed the prime minister as “my comrade”.
He is ten years older than him and from the beginning he spoke to him in the singular. When he entered the Maximos Palace for the first time, he addressed him with the address “my friend”, causing embarrassment to those in front. He never showed interest in adopting the codes of the N.D. and perhaps that is why he has not developed strong friendships with associates of the prime minister, such as those with his fellow students or fellow vacationers in Kythnos, a place of his existential reference, where he restored a small house left to him by his father.
In 2017, having decided to claim him as a partner, Kyriakos Mitsotakis went to the presentation of his – strongly anti-SYRIZA – book “Dictionary without tie”in which he analyzed through specific entries the perversion of concepts for propaganda reasons, the double language of the 2015-2016 period, as he defined it (e.g. the replacement of the troika by the institutions). The panel was attended by Evangelos Venizeloswith whom they have managed to remain friends despite the strongly critical attitude of the former deputy prime minister towards Mr. Mitsotakis.
Yiannis Vlastaris had no inhibitions about standing next to Mr. Mitsotakis, even though he came from elsewhere. Someone asked him how a leftist made such a leap, and he still remembers his answer: “The man I met is uncommitted, not ideologically complex at all, and knows more rock than I do.”
He didn’t even wonder why Mr. Mitsotakis showed him such trust without knowing each other well. The interpretation he once gave when asked is that he “needed Postcolonial formulations and thinking” from a man “of the field,” because he was locked up in a Harvard library. After all, what leader does not want by his side a person who knows the secrets of the opponent, who can write a condolence message on his death Manoli Glezou and at the same time a speech about the Congress;
Although they are different in most ways, they haven’t had a serious fight over the years, or even cooled off, as those around them find. Their relationship is stable, without fluctuations, and protected, since the Prime Minister’s press secretary has no personal agenda. The fact that they exchange books and movie recommendations is irrelevant to third parties.
In the seven years that he has been next to the prime minister, he has not given interviews, he has not made posts, he has not become a “source” for the media, avoiding political relevance and the spotlight – he is invisible outside the Maximos Palace. He keeps his two daughters out of the fire of public life and protects his privacy without noise, although he has not changed his habits significantly, apart from waking up earlier and going to Kythnos less.
He recently became a grandfather. His granddaughter unknowingly helps him out of the darkness he’s plunged into after a terrible loss became known in his absence.
Bibliography
His office in Megaro Maximos is easily distinguished because there are always several “extracurricular” books scattered about. At this time, a version of Seferis’s speeches in Stockholm, when he received the Nobel, in 1963, entitled “I am a contradiction myself”. And next to it, the “Unrefined Thoughts” of the Polish Jew Stanislav Gerzi Letz with two phrases underlined: “How sighs are translated into foreign languages” – “When everything agrees, something must be wrong.”
