Greek PM taps top female judge as country’s president

Greece‘s conservative government on Wednesday nominated top judge Katerina Sakellaropoulou for the Greek presidency, a largely ceremonial role selected by the country’s parliament.

Sakellaropoulou, 64, now president of the Council of State, Greece‘s top administrative court, would be the first female president if elected by lawmakers.

“I think its time for our country to have a worthy Greek woman at the highest position of state,” Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said in a public statement. His New Democracy party holds 158 seats in the 300-member parliament.

Sakellaropoulou, from the northern city of Thessaloniki, was the first female head of the Council of State. She has written numerous papers on environmental protection and chairs a society on environmental law.

Leftist Syriza, which lost power in a July 2019 parliamentary election, has already said it would support the re-appointment of conservative lawmaker Prokopis Pavlopoulos, elected for a five-year term in 2015. His term expires on March 20.

The process to select a president can go up to five voting rounds in parliament, with the election threshold starting at 200 votes and gradually falling to 151.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.