Georgios Karatzaferis

Georgios Karatzaferis
President of Popular Orthodox Rally
Incumbent
Assumed office 14 September 2000
Member of the European Parliament
In office 13 June 2004 – 25 September 2007
Personal details
Born	11 August 1947 Athens, Greece
Political party	Popular Orthodox Rally
Profession	Journalist, politician
Religion	Greek Orthodoxy
Website

Georgios Karatzaferis (Greek: Γεώργιος Καρατζαφέρης; born August 11, 1947) is a Greek politician, a former 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. 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

Karatzaferis was born in 1947. 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).

He received an honours diploma from the London School of Journalism in 1994. He became an editor of 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)..

Controversy

On different controversial remarks, Georgios Karatzaferis has publicly questioned why Jews did not "come to work on 9/11", suggesting that they were warned to leave the World Trade Center prior to the attack. He challenged the Israeli ambassador in Greece to come and debate on "the Holocaust, the Auschwitz and Dachau myth" and in 2001 he stated that "the Jews have no legitimacy to speak in Greece and provoke the political world. Their impudence is crass".^[2]

Books

Karatzaferis is also the author of five books which are the following:

• Το Μοντέλο της Δημοκρατίας - The Model of Democracy
• Η Γυναίκα Σήμερα - The Woman of Today
• Η Λιάνη στηρίζει την Aλλαγή - Liani supports the Change^[3]
• Αγώνες και Αγωνίες της δεκαετίας 1990-2000 - Struggles and Agonies of the 1990–2000 decade
• Βίοι Αγίων - Biographies of Saints
• Η Λευκή Βίβλος - The White Bible

References

1. "Your MEPs : Georgios KARATZAFERIS". Europa. European Parliament. Retrieved 5 March 2011.
2. "New Greek government includes ministers of antisemitic party". CFCA. Retrieved 1 September 2012.
3. The Allagi (Change; Greek: Αλλαγή) was a slogan used by the Panhellenic Socialist Movement founded by Dimitra Liani's husband Andreas Papandreou.

External links

• (Greek) Official Website
• European Parliament Biographical Record