National Radical Union
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The National Radical Union (ERE, Greek: Εθνική Ριζοσπαστική Ένωσις, Ethnike Rizospastike Enosis) was a Greek political party formed in 1955 by Konstantinos Karamanlis out of the Greek Rally party.
ΕRΕ was a conservative, right-wing party, which comprised also some prominent centrists, such as:
- Panagiotis Kanellopoulos
- Konstantinos Tsatsos, president of the Greek Repablic from 1975 to 1980.
- Evangelos Averoff, minister of foreign affairs in Karamanlis' governments (1955-1963) and leader of ND from 1981 to 1984.
Karamanlis resigned from the leadership of ΕRΕ in 1963 and was succeeded by Panagiotis Kanellopoulos. The cause of Karamanlis' resignation was the hotly contested elections of 1963. Acording to official results, ERE won the elections. But the opposition Centre Union and United Democratic Left accused the government of Karamanlis of massive fraud, did not acknoledge the result, organised massive demonstrations and called for new elections. Karamanlis felt gravely insulted and resigned from the Premiership and the leadership of the party. New elections were held in 1964 which the Centre Union won with the second highest percentage in Greek history, 54 percent of the vote.
Kanellopoulos remained leader of the party until 1967, when he formed a government which did not last more than a month, as it was overthrown by the Greek military junta of 1967-1974. After 1967 ΕRΕ, like all political parties, was outlawed. It was never regenerated, since Karamanlis formed a new party in 1974, New Democracy.
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