Vatopedi brought on the separation

Peoples’ lives intersect briefly. Sometimes they match like those of a dancing couple in a long, flawless dance, while other times they vanish into thin air.

The meeting between Giorgos Voulgarakis and Katerina Peleki belongs to the first category.
They met at the DAP-NDFK offices in 1984. He had just graduated from the Industrial School of Piraeus.
Coming from Rethymno, Crete, with two grandparents belonging to the Right wing and the Center Wing respectively, and an old uncle who was a right-wing parliament member, he had forged excellent connections with Konstantinos Mitsotakis who, as New Democracy leader, took notice of the young man. She was a first-year Law School student from Aitoloakarnania.

Her father was a member of the Justice organization of the N.D. party and a journalist for the “Estia” newspaper, and he offered his legal services pro bono to many a monastery on Mount Athos, while he had led the campaign for the sanctification of the monk Ephraim. Her mother, Chaido, is a niece of the elder Theoklitos, an upstanding member of the Mount Athos community and a spiritual father of Ephraim.

Her brother, Dimitris Pelekis, was also a Law School student and had appeared in an election poster in 1985 bearing the slogan: "Why should you start your life in unemployment? Vote for the New Democracy party”. Much later, as a lawyer, he would be part of the ND ballot for Aitoloakarnania in 2007. In 1984, these two families met and ultimately bonded.

The mutual interest became a flirtation that led to love. Over time, they got engaged as they climbed up the ladder of the party youth’s hierarchy. Katerina became a member of the Illumination Committee, while Giorgos was voted vice president first and then president of the youth party. After Giorgos’ first election into parliament in 1989, the couple got married at the Athens Cathedral with more than 5.000 guests.

Friends and associates claimed the pot but their best man was Costas, a OBGYN from Herakleion. The choice of such a person was thought by many as an attempt to avoid hurting anyone’s feelings. For the same reason, they arranged for no wedding reception. Their entry into marriage was combined with a victory of their party in that year's elections, while their love was sealed with the birth of their first child, Paulina.

Three more children followed: Apostolis, Dionisis and Charis, who made up the rest of the family’s happiness. Up until 1996, Katerina was a supervisor of her husband's political office, while she also focused on her career as notary.

Giorgos was a first class party member during his entire term in the opposition, whereas during Kostas Karamanlis’ administration in 2004, his career took off, as he headed several ministries. At the same time, his popularity also increased greatly, while he kept his family life in order. Within this context, he appointed several of his family members to minor government positions.

Nobody can be blamed for this, if they possessed qualifications. What even his close friends claim, though, is that he did not calculate correctly the dangers and pitfalls of his own choices, the possible attacks against his name and position, and his removal from the “cultured and fit to govern” profile. Everything that followed was a real nightmare that is still everpresent, putting his own personal life on the line.

Today, more through a political survival instinct rather than stubbornness, he is going through a transitional period of patient adjustment, which has none of his past glamour. His wife is still involved in the Vatopedi scandal, while he is employed as a scientific advisor at the Athens University.

At the same time, a rumour is circulating which has him involved in his own communications company. His appearance in Dubai to attend a medical devices presentation and his alleged deal to invest in an Exarchia restaurant do not seem to have bothered anyone.

However, according to people close to him, he spent a considerable amount of time dealing with the frictions arising within his own house.

Sitting alone now in the Pountazezas summer house, away from psychological tensions, emotional charges and indirect judicial dependencies, he might be reconstructing the lost time, which will lead him to decisive action or definitive ruptures, both in his professional and his personal life.

Read more in this week’s Proto Thema.