Greek Legislative Election, 1961

Greek Legislative Election, 1961

Parliamentary elections were held in Greece on 29 October 1961. The result was a third consecutive victory for Constantine Karamanlis and his National Radical Union party, which won 176 of the 300 seats in Parliament.

Nevertheless, the leader of the newly formed Center Union (an alliance of all liberal and centrist parties), Georgios Papandreou and the leaders of the left-wing Pandemocratic Agrarian Front questioned the legality of the results, claiming that Karamanlis, the army and the palace rigged the vote. Papandreou announced an "uncompromising struggle" (ανένδοτος αγών) against Karamanlis' government, demanding new elections. Karamanlis denied all the allegations of Papandreou, although the opposition parties insisted in them. Eventually, the elections of 1961 became known in the Greek political history as the "elections of violence and fraud" (εκλογές της βίας και νοθείας).