"What Right are you talking about? Am I the Right-winger? And who are the Leftists? Wasn’t it I who, as soon as I took over after the Civil War, stopped the executions and opened the prisons and exile camps? Wasn’t it the centrists who made Law 509, all the anti-communist legislation, the political loyalty declarations, the prisons, the exiles, and the executions? I took office just six years after the Civil War ended. And immediately, I found myself in the middle. On one side were my own people, the right-wingers, who wanted us to crush the communists, and on the other side were the communists, who refused to accept their defeat. So, gradually, I released them from prison; I didn’t carry out any executions, and I safeguarded the democracy of that time. So, I am the right-winger, and they are the democrats, who did all these things, which I found ready-made? And didn’t I also legalize the Communist Party after the dictatorship? Didn’t I withdraw from NATO when it was necessary? Didn’t I nationalize the companies of Andreadis, Onassis, and Niarchos? Didn’t I achieve the smooth and bloodless transition from dictatorship to democracy? Didn’t I contribute decisively to the abolition of the monarchy? Didn’t I guarantee the alternation of parties in power? Didn’t I draft the best Constitution Greece ever had? So what are you telling me now about being the leader of the Right? You all need to understand that the time has come to move away from slogans and labels, and for the parties to stop trapping people in rhetoric, in which they then become entangled themselves."
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Karamanlis interrupted a journalist who described him as a Right-winger on an official trip to India and Australia.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Konstantinos_Karamanlis
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Konstantinos Karamanlis
Konstantinos Karamanlis (8 March 1907 – 23 April 1998) was a Greek politician and a dominant figure in Greek politics. He was the four-time Prime Minister of Greece and two-term president of the Third Hellenic Republic. A towering figure in Greek politics, his political c
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