In his first mandate, Mr. Simitis set out to curb Greece’s extravagant public and private spending and sought to prepare the economy to meet European Union targets for his country’s entry into the eurozone. He managed to reduce inflation and public debt while stabilizing the drachma currency.
His cautious manner was a stark contrast to the Papandreou years.
“We needed someone who would talk less and do more, a person who is an ordinary Greek, who does not come down from on high and who does not hide the problems with endless myths,” Dimitris Rappas, a government spokesman, told The New York Times in 1996.
Mr. Simitis won a second term in 2000, but only by a slim majority and far less than the support he sought against his main opponent, Kostas Karamanlis, leader of the New Democracy Party. Also, under the supervision of Mr. Simitis, Greece finally dealt with the dreaded urban terrorist movement on November 17 that arose out of a popular struggle against the American-backed military officers who seized power in 1967.
In 2002, an injured bomber began talking and, as a result, police made a series of arrests that convinced authorities to say most of the organization had been arrested. Theodore Couloumbis, a political analyst, said at the time that the country had undergone a “great change”.
“We have crossed the threshold from an unstable democracy to a consolidated democracy,” he said.
However, two years later Mr. Simitis resigned from the post of PASOK president and said he would not run in the upcoming elections, in which his party lost to New Democracy. He was succeeded at the head of PASOK by George Papandreou, the son of Andreas Papandreou, who was the Greek Minister of Foreign Affairs at the time.
