.
Georgios Karatzaferis (born August 11, 1947) is a Greek politician, a member of the Hellenic Parliament and the president of the Popular Orthodox Rally. Previously, Karatzaferis was a member of parliament of the liberal-conservative New Democracy party, from which he was expelled in 2000. He is a former Member of the European Parliament[1] and former vice-president of the Independence and Democracy group. His party's views, ideas, and electoral campaigns are often broadcast and promoted by the relatively minor private Greek TV channel TeleAsty (former Telecity), which he founded and owns. The party's ideas are also disseminated in the party’s weekly newspaper, A1.
Biography and career
Born in 1947, Karatzaferis became a producer of radio broadcasts at the age of 15 and a television producer at 22. In 1977 he founded R.TV.P.R. AE advertising body and he created the TV Press Video Review in 1983. In 1990 he established the radio and television stations Radio City and TeleAsty (the latter was initially known as TeleCity).
In 1983, he was offered a scholarship by Adenauer Foundation and also obtained an honours diploma from the London School of Journalism in 1994. He became a draftsman with the newspaper Alpha Ena in 2000. In the beginning of the 1980s he was also a columnist for Nea Poreia, the official publication of the political organization to which he belonged and was an MP. He also wrote contributed to daily newspapers including Eleftheros, Apogevmatini, and Eleftheros Typos. In 2005, he founded the Academy of Communications Studies in Athens.
As a member of the Greek Parliament his responsibilities included the chairmanship of the Parliamentary Watchdog Committee, the Public Order Committee and the Press and Mass Media Committee (1993–2000). He was a member of the Committees on Public Administration and Foreign Affairs (1993–2004), Member of the National Communications' Confidentiality Protection Committee and Vice-Chairman of the Greco Spanish Friendship Association (1999).
In 2000, Karatzaferis was expelled from the New Democracy party for what were considered to constitute derogatory and inflammatory remarks, amongst a wide variety of which were also his call for the party to "hire 100.000 of our boys" in the public sector, and his accusations that the party's leader Costas Karamanlis was uncritically following Spiliotopoulos' wishes. Karatzaferis then announced the foundation of the Popular Orthodox Rally.
While on the New Democracy ticket, he had been elected Representative for Athens in 1993, in 1996 and in 2000. In 2002, after being expelled from New Democracy, he unsuccessfully ran for the position of hyper-nomarchis in Athens, where he was elected as a Prefectural Councilor on the Me Kathari Kardia (With Clean Heart) slate. In the National Elections of 2004, his party failed to tally the 3% threshold of popular votes, and did not enter the parliament. In the subsequent European Parliament Elections of 2004, LAOS received 4.2% of the votes and Karatzaferis became member of the European Parliament. In 2006 Karatzaferis ran for mayor of Thessaloniki. He tallied 7,5% of the vote trailing three other candidates.
In the European Parliament, Karatzaferis became the recordholder MP in the number of questions to the EP (more than 422). He is also the Vice-Chairman of the Delegation to the EU-Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia Joint Parliamentary Committee, member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, the Delegation to the EU-Bulgaria Joint Parliamentary Committee, the Delegation for relations with Mercosur and the Delegation to the Euro-Mediterranean Parliamentary Assembly and substitute member of Temporary Committee on the alleged use of European countries by the CIA for the transport and illegal detention of prisoners. According to a December 2005 subscriber-only article in the online newspaper "New Europe"[2]. the "European League" NGO, based in Geneva, selected Karatzaferis as one of the TOP 4 MPs for his rhetoric skills and overall activity. The same NGO selected him in its list of the best Members of the European Parliament per country for the year 2006, where the factors taken into consideration were the overall activity of the MEP, the contribution to the interests of his/her own country, as well as his/her dedication to the establishment of peace, democracy, understanding and cooperation in Europe [3].
Books
Karatzaferis is also the author of five books which are the following:
1) Το Μοντέλο της Δημοκρατίας-The Model of Democracy
2) Η Γυναίκα Σήμερα-The Woman of Today
3) Η Λιάνη στηρίζει την Aλλαγή - Liani supports the Allagi (change)[2]
4) Αγώνες και Αγωνίες της δεκαετίας 1990-2000-Struggles and agonies of the 1990–2000 decade
5) Βίοι Αγίων - Biographies of saints
Activities in the European Parliament
Karatzaferis has been a very active Member of European Parliament. A partial record of his activities there includes:
A motion for a resolution on European Parliament resolution on anti-Semitism and racism
A written declaration on the genocide of the Pontic Greeks [4]
References
^ "Your MEPs : Georgios KARATZAFERIS". Europa. European Parliament. Retrieved 5 March 2011.
^ The Allagi (Change; Greek: Αλλαγή) was a slogan used by the Panhellenic Socialist Movement founded by Dimitra Liani's husband Andreas Papandreou.
European Parliament Biographical Record
| Ancient Greece
Science, Technology , Medicine , Warfare, , Biographies , Life , Cities/Places/Maps , Arts , Literature , Philosophy ,Olympics, Mythology , History , Images Medieval Greece / Byzantine Empire Science, Technology, Arts, , Warfare , Literature, Biographies, Icons, History Modern Greece Cities, Islands, Regions, Fauna/Flora ,Biographies , History , Warfare, Science/Technology, Literature, Music , Arts , Film/Actors , Sport , Fashion --- |
From Wikipedia, All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License
