MODERN GREECE: A History since 1821 - Amazon Web Services

154 RETURN TO DEMOCRACY (1974–2009)
were elected in 1936 came largely from the urban centers, territories
unified with Greece after 1912, and refugee communities after 1922.
In the parliament of 1964, the territorial representation of the two major
parties was more uniform, with deputies from urban centers, the “new”
territories, and the refugee communities evenly distributed between
right and center. Lawyers were again numerically dominant, with
workers and farmers conspicuously absent on both sides of the House.
Of the 107 right-wing coalition representatives elected in 1964, as many
as 20 percent had begun their political careers in the Liberal camp,
while only two of Conservative origin joined the ranks of the Center
Union. In 1974, the center supplied New Democracy and the Panhellenic
Socialist Movement (PASOK) with several of its former adherents.
EDIK’s (the Union of Democratic Center) claim, therefore, that the
Liberal camp was constantly renewing the ranks of other major parties
was not without foundation. The outcome of the referendum to decide
the future of the monarchy in Greece was perhaps more in keeping with
the public mood for change. Although Karamanlis maintained a neutral
stance vis-à-vis the issue in question, his silence was widely interpreted
as a condemnation of the institution, which had destabilized Greek
politics on several crucial occasions. The referendum of December 1974,
which was the sixth to be held on the issue of the Crown in the twentieth
century (1920, 1924, 1935, 1946, 1973), sealed the fate of the monarchy
with 69 percent of the votes cast against the institution.
The drafting of a new constitution incorporating changes that had
emerged since the return to democracy, as well as the reformist visions
of the prime minister, began in earnest after the referendum. With more
than a two-thirds majority, Karamanlis introduced a draft constitution
for discussion in Parliament at the end of December 1974 that provided
for a strong presidential executive after the Gaullist model and was
heavily criticized by those who were against any curtailment of the
powers of Parliament.
The constitution of 1975 replaced that of 1952 (which had been put
into temporary force in the summer of 1974) and was the outcome of a
compromise between Karamanlis’s bid for a presidential regime and
those who upheld the prerogatives of Parliament. Among other changes
it set out the legal framework of church–state relations. It removed the
requirement that the president be Orthodox and swear to protect the
Orthodox creed. The clause forbidding proselytism was moved from
Article 3 to Article 13 on human rights “prohibiting proselytism against