Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis attended the funeral service of Nikos Tagaras in Corinth.
“Niko, I am here today to bid you farewell, along with your many friends, along with your beautiful family, the people who have honored you with their trust for years.
“I am also here to mourn a personal friend and a valued colleague. Most of all, however, to tell you from the bottom of my heart that you will always be remembered as a shining example of a self-made and worthy scientist.
A politician who knew how to combine quiet action with results and a public man who, in his long career, has been whole and serious, loyal to duty and, at the same time, meek and conciliatory to his interlocutors.
I am still here to thank you for the many things you have contributed to the country, as mayor, as prefect, as a member of parliament and then by assuming a very important governmental responsibility, for the country’s first comprehensive spatial and urban planning.
It is a reform whose importance you knew better than anyone else. A reform that I too hold in my heart. I remember the endless meetings with you, where, with godly patience, you explained and gave us in simple terms the complexity of the task you had undertaken.
And – tragic irony – tomorrow the new Code is being voted on in the House of Assembly without you being there to see it put into practice. But it will remain, however, as your crowning legacy and as a project which we have decided from now on will bear your name.
Because in every post I have asked you to work, there has never been a single voice of tension. Enemies and friends, you see, unspokenly conspired that you were the right man to take on the critical task of organizing the homeland.
And that recognition ultimately quelled all competition and, much more so, the envy that is always, unfortunately, present in politics. Such a charisma is rare indeed.
Finally, I am here to honour a long career in public life, which I believe ultimately brings out the good side of politics, because you, Niko, have shown that your party consistency can always be accompanied by a willingness to communicate, your determination can be accompanied by prudence and your party momentum can be accompanied by soft speech – qualities that are hard to find nowadays.
I know you fought with dignity and I distinctly remember our last phone call, where you insisted on talking to me about the job. Just as I know that you preferred quiet work to talk. So I will also honor your doric attitude, omitting the many things I could have said.
Just to thank you for something precious that you inspired us: the certainty that principles and values, such as commitment to the common good, may sometimes seem traditional, seem to come from the past, but presences like yours have finally transmuted them, as a timely and absolutely necessary feature of public life.
Because today more than ever, Nico, we need examples like the ones you have given us. Politicians who are at the same time human, complex thinking that can at the same time be communicated simply, dedication to ideas that are ultimately not “imprisoned” in dogma, and above all work, hard work, painstaking work, for the result and for the unity of all around it.
These are qualities that will now accompany you along with the love of your thousands of friends, but along with the respect of your opponents.
Goodbye, Niko. And you truly deserve the Greek flag that will accompany you to your final resting place,” he concluded the Prime Minister’s eulogy.
