“When Pasok made the proposal to run, it seemed like a crazy scenario,” Doukas said. “But I couldn’t say no.”
Even before taking office on Jan. 1 he came under fire from his political opponents and supporters of the mayor he replaced, Kostas Bakoyannis, who just happens to be the nephew of Greece’s center-right prime minister. Central government, in what his friends consider acts of revenge, has denigrated him and stripped him of powers.
Yet Doukas is defiant, and his path to power could provide a model for other outsiders wanting to change the status quo.
Concealed discontent
Doukas was up against it from the start. Apart from being such an unknown, and having a limited amount of time to make people recognize him, he had to run his campaign in the middle of summer when many Athenians are out of town ― often on one of Greece’s islands, many hours from the mainland. Doukas had to convince people to run with him and bring them back to the capital to sign the necessary paperwork.
“I was certain from the beginning that I was the only one who could beat Bakoyannis,” he said. “I saw that there was a concealed discontent prevailing in Athens and there was a born winner. But history is full of born winners who were eventually defeated.”
Doukas, also a professor of energy policy, ran with the backing of Pasok but received the support of all the left-wing parties in a runoff vote.
