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words, while there has been a professionalisation of the communication practices, it is
hard to argue that outside professionals have any powers. On the contrary, they are
expendable. Sometimes, they are the targets of the intra-party opposition for various
reasons: they wrongly advised the leader, or, because the intra-party opposition wants
to dispute with or criticise the leader,the attack is focused on disputes within the group
and with outsiders instead of on him.

Costas Laliotis, ex-Minister of Public Work and the Environment and ex-General
Secretary of the party, always played a leading role in PASOK’s political communication.
He was credited with the inspiration of using the theme from Carmina Burana to
accompany all PASOK’s rallies in the 1980s. Apart from Laliotis, PASOK’s official
communications team in the 2000 general elections included Nikos Themelis (lawyer,
personal adviser to the Prime Minister), Dimitris Reppas (Minister of the Media), Petros
Efthimiou (journalist and later Minister of the Education) and Giorgos Pantayias
(personal adviser to Prime Minister Simitis). PASOK also employed professionals: Mass
Team, a company whose owner has been involved with PASOK for years, and recently,
Esftratios Fanaras,pollster and owner of the survey agency Metron Analysis,and Lefteris
Kousoulis of consulting company Leyein kai Prattein (Saying and Acting). Kousoulis had
the confidence of the prime minister and it is said that he had the idea of focusing the
2000 election campaign more on Costas Simitis, the Prime Minister and Leader of
PASOK, and less on PASOK itself. The party’s chief slogan in the campaigning of 2000,
which appeared on a giant poster picturing the Prime Minister, said: ‘We are creating
the new Greece, the future has begun.’ This communications group had also decided
not to repeat the mistake of showing Simitis looking different from how he did in real
life. George Papandreou, the new PASOK leader, used his own communication advisors
as well as prominent party members (an indication of this is the return of ex-secretary
of the PASOK,Laliotis) in the 2004 general elections.

Similarly, the New Democracy leader, Costas Karamanlis, had his own group. During the
2000 elections, the New Democracy communication team was formed by Michalis
Liapis (politician, and cousin of Karamanlis), Aris Spiliotopoulos (politician, and at that
time responsible of the Press Office of the party), Yiannis Loulis (political analyst),
George Flessas (owner of the first political communication and public affairs company Political Communication and Professionalisation in Greece
Civitas), and advertising agency, Spot Thompson. While PASOK’s communications team
was focusing their 2000 election campaign on Simitis, New Democracy was responding
in kind, contrasting Costas Karamanlis to Simitis. The image of Karamanlis and his wife,
singing along to rembetika music in a taverna, was contrasted with Simitis and
practically the entire Cabinet inaugurating the Thessalonica Concert Hall amid much
fanfare, as a clear reminder of the slogan, ‘Simitis with the vested interests, and
Karamanlis with the people’.New Democracy’s chief 2000 election slogans,‘A new start,’
and ‘There is a better Greece and we want it’, were mainly directed at the feeling of
fatigue that experts claimed Greek society felt after almost 20 years of PASOK rule. The
image of Karamanlis as ‘young, unspoiled, affable, popular, and comfortable with 131