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New Democracy or ND (, is the main center-right Liberal-conservative political party in Greece . After an initial period of success, ND spent most of the 1980s and '90s in opposition. At the 7 March, 2004 Greek Elections , ND returned to office under the leadership of Costas Caramanlis , nephew of the party's founder. ND was founded on October 4 1974 , two months after Constantine Caramanlis was sworn in as the first Prime Minister in the post-dictatorship era in Greece. Caramanlis had already served as Prime Minister from 1955 to 1963. In the first free elections of the new era, ND won by a landslide, securing 54.4% of the vote. This result is attributed mostly to the personal appeal of Caramanlis, rather than the influence of ND as a party, to the electorate; "Caramanlis or tanks" was a slogan at the time, with the latter referring to the military, which, it was feared, might stage another coup. Caramanlis intended ND to be a more modern and progressive right-wing party than those which had ruled Greece before the 1967 military coup, including his own ERE (Ethniki Rizospastiki Enosis = National Radical Union). The party's ideology was defined as "radical liberalism," a term defined by ND as "the prevalence of free market rules with the decisive intervention of the state in favour of social justice." In 1977 , ND again won national elections, albeit with a largely reduced majority (41.88%); still, it retained a comfortable parliamentary majority. Under Caramanlis Greece redefined its relations with NATO , and tried to resolve the Cyprus issue following the Turkish invasion. In 1980 , however, Caramanlis retired. His successor, George Rallis , was defeated at the following elections by the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) led by Andreas Papandreou . Under ND leadership Greece joined the European Communities in 1981 . Caramanlis was then charged by opposing parties for not allowing a referendum, since the majority of people rejected the prospect of entry. ND returned to power in a coalition government (prime minister: Tzanis Tzannetakis) with the traditional Left Party (Synaspismos, which at the time included the Communist Party of Greece) in 1989 , participated in the grand coalition government of Xenophon Zolotas from November 1989 to April 1990 and, eventually, formed a majority government under Mitsotakis after new elections held on April 10, 1990. The party then suffered a period of successive loses. It was defeated in 1993 under Mitsotakis , in 1996 under Miltiades Evert , and in 2000 under Costas Caramanlis , nephew of the party's founder. In 2000 ND lost by the smallest margin in modern Greek history. By 2003 , however, ND was consistently leading the PASOK government of Costas Simitis in opinion polls. In January 2004 Simitis resigned and announced elections for March 7 , at which Caramanlis faced the new PASOK leader, George Papandreou . Despite speculation that Papandreou would succeed in restoring PASOK's fortunes, Caramanlis had a comfortable victory in the elections and became Greece's first center-right Prime Minister after eleven years. ND is a member of the European People's Party , the European Democrat Union , the International Democrat Union and the Christian Democrat International . EXTERNAL LINKS
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