Born in
1954, she is the oldest of four children of veteran Greek politician Constantine
Mitsotakis, 83, who was prime minister of Greece from 1990 to 1993 and leader
of the country's conservative party, New Democracy, from 1984 to 1993. Her
mother, Marika Yannoukou, has led the struggle to expand the rights of the
handicapped in Greece.
At 14,
Dora and her family fled to Paris to escape the military dictatorship which
ruled Greece for seven years starting in 1967. They returned to Athens in
1974 when military rule collapsed.
That same
year she married Pavlos Bakoyannis, a noted journalist and politician, and
bore him two children, Alexia and Kostas. During the next several years she
worked in the Ministry of Economic Coordination and later the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs. In 1984, when her father was elected leader of the New Democracy
Party, she became his chief of staff.
In 1989,
her husband, then a deputy in the Greek Parliament, was gunned down by members
of the Greek terrorist group "November 17", as he entered his office
building. After his death, she ran for her husband's seat in the remote mountainous
region of Evrytania and won the election.
When her
father was elected Prime Minister the following year, she served first as
an undersecretary of the state and then as Minister of Culture. She was re-elected
three times as deputy from Evrytania and later shifted to a district in central
Athens, where she was elected by a sweeping margin.
When New
Democracy lost power in 1993 and her father gave up leadership of the Party,
she ran for a seat in its central committee and won. In 2000 she was appointed
as shadow foreign and defense minister by the new leader of her party, Kostas
Karamanlis.
During
her years in Parliament, she became a leading advocate of strong anti-terrorist
legislation. In 2000 a bill was finally passed aimed at strengthening the
fight against Greek terrorists, especially November 17, which had assassinated
23 persons, including her husband and five Americans. Last June, the investigation
against November 17 intensified and a series of arrests began that have so
far netted 17 individuals, most of whom have acknowledge being members of
the terrorist group. Among then are three men who said they participated in
the murder of Pavlos Bakoyannis.
Last summer
when Mr. Karamanlis was looking for a way to demonstrate his party's growing
strength against the ruling Socialist Party in upcoming local elections, he
picked Dora Bakoyannis to go after the biggest prize - Athens. She led a large
field of candidates in the first round of the elections on October 13 by a
wide margin and then trounced her Socialist opponent in the runoff a week
later by the biggest majority in her party's history.
Mrs. Bakoyannis
studied political science and public law at the University of Athens and politics
and communication in Munich, Germany. She is fluent in English, French and
German.
In 1998
she married for the second time to Greek businessman Isidoros Kouvelos.
