Who is Takis Baltakos? Takis Baltakos was appointed by Antonis Samaras to the key political position of government general secretary in June 2012.
He has been identified with the most rightwing section of New Democracy, and is said to have "led opposition" to proposals crackdown on neonazi Golden Dawn.
In December 2012,
he told the head of the National Commission for Human Rights, Kostis Papaioannou, that "he doesn't care, in his capacity as a representative of the government and New Democracy, about the committee's work and human rights, nor about the country's international obligations". Papaioannou was presenting his annual report to the government. He said Baltakos opened it at a chapter on racist violence and threw it on the table, saying, "
We are not interested in the human rights of foreigners."
In 2013, he is alleged to have said that cooperation between New Democracy and Golden Dawn in future elections was
"undesirable but not an unlikely possibility".
In May 2013, it was reported that he was one of the key officials involved in
holding up an antiracism bill on the grounds that it could "potentially cause problems". The bill would have outlawed incitement against people because of their race, religion, ethnicity or sexual orientation, and impose jail sentences of up to six years on offenders.
Baltakos was a leading voice against moving against Golden Dawn, up to September 2013, when the government was pushed into taking action after the murder of Pavlos Fyssas.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Baltakos said that a crackdown "would backfire, winning the party sympathy from voters disgusted with the establishment and alienating conservative constituencies such as the army and church."
Last week, he said he has been an
"anticommunist" all his life and that the Greek left has "plagued" the country since 1942, the year it took up arms against the occupying Nazis.
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