English
Argyris Dinopoulos is a member of the Greek parliament with the political party of New Democracy.
New Democracy is the Conservative party of Greece and has been in opposition since the 4th of October 2009 when it was defeated in the national elections by the currently ruling socialist party (PASOK).
Argyris Dinopoulos was first elected in the Greek Parliament in 2007 and then reelected in 2009.
The constituency in which Argyris Dinopoulos is elected is that of Athens. The most densely populated and competitive constituency in Greece.
Some of the most well-known members of traditional Greek political families, both socialist and conservative, run for office in the same constituency.
Argyris Dinopoulos is the son of everyday people-both of his parents were civil servants. He was first involved in politics in 2002 when he was elected mayor of Vrilissia, a small municipality located in the north of Athens.
However, most of greeks know Argyris Dinopoulos not only as a mayor or an MP but also as one of the most famous war correspondents in the history of Greek television.
Education
Argyris Dinopoulos completed his secondary education at the French Lyceum of Athens. He was accepted in the Law School of Athens in 1974. This coincided with the collapse of the military regime that had been ruling Greece since 1967. The very same year democracy was restored by Konstantinos Karamanlis, the founder of New Democracy, the party with which Argyris Dinopoulos is elected.
After the completion of his studies at the Law School of Athens Argyris Dinopoulos continued his post -graduate studies in the universities of Paris and London.
The field of his graduate studies was comparative law with a specialization in the field of the legal systems of the communist countries of the time. Furthermore, he specialized in the relation of justice and the Marxist theory.
He obtained his LL.M from the University College of London in 1981.
From practicing law to journalism
Argyris Dinopoulos worked as a lawyer until the 1980s when he decided to give up practicing law for journalism. From that point on he went on to become one of the prominent reporters of ERT, the state run TV network. The only TV network in Greece in those days as television was subject to a state monopoly.
The state monopoly was abolished in the late 1980s when the first private TV networks were launched. It was then that Argyris Dinopoulos moved to Antenna, the TV network with the highest viewing rates at the time. He remained at Antenna until 2002 when he got involved in politics.
The first coverage of a major event
The collapse of the communist regime in Romania in December 1989 and the subsequent execution of Nicolaje Causesku was the first coverage of a major international event for Argyris Dinopoulos.
In those days, TV crews still used the U-matic cameras and were consisted of two individuals. The second member of the crew (apart from the camera-man) was the video -man, the technician whose job was to carry the enormous video mechanism that was connected to the camera with a wire.
The mission to Romania was the beginning of a long series of reports from the Balkans in the turbulent 1990s.
The Gulf war
The main event of the early 1990s was undoubtedly the eruption of the Gulf War in 1991.
Argyris Dinopoulos, along with hundreds of his fellow journalists, covered the war from Amman-Jordan, since the Iraqi government had given the exclusive rights for the coverage of the war from Baghdad to CNN.
Ten years later, in 2001, Argyris Dinopoulos wrote the novel "A war video-tape", which takes place in the Middle East and narrates the love story between a war correspondent and a young female reporter.
The Balkan tragedy
The end of the Gulf War was succeeded by the advent of the Yugoslav crisis. A crisis that led to the bloodiest conflict in Europe since the end of WWII. Argyris Dinopoulos covered the Yugoslav Wars from the very start until 1995 when the Dayton agreement was signed. He was also there to cover the tragic aftermath of the signing.
He bore witness to the Kosovo war, the NATO bombardment of Serbia in 1992, the meltdown of the Milosevic regime and the ethnic clashes in FYROM between Albanians and Slaves.
He made countless reports from Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia and Bosnia and he was one of the first war correspondents who was present at Vucovar in November 1991. He was also present in Sarajevo in the spring and summer of 1992 when the siege of the Bosnian capital begun.
War correspondent, producer and novelist
In those days Greek TV networks were in an embryonic state. (TV deregulation took place in 1989). Hence, every assignments in war zones were in essence the responsibility of the reporter-war correspondent.Argyris Dinopoulos learned in the war zones of the Balkans to be apart from a reporter also a producer. He had to take care of how the reports would be sent (via satellite but also via terrestrial networks) but also to find ways to take his team from war zone to war zone (unfortunately always traveling in unarmed cars).
Only after the persistent pressure exercised by Argyris Dinopoulos and some other Greek colleagues of his did the newly founded Greek TV networks purchased satellite telephones (massive contraptions of more than 30 kilos each) that were proved to be the most valuable devices for war correspondents in war torn Yugoslavia in the 1990s.
In 1993, the year of the inhumane siege of Sarajevo, Argyris Dinopoulos wrote the book “Is this Sarajevo?” a chronicle of the everyday life of Sarajevo’s besieged citizens. It is one of the first books written internationally having the war in Yugoslavia as a subject. In Greece, it caused an upheaval due to the fact that it revealed the war crimes committed by Bosnian Serbs against the Muslim population of Bosnia. In those days a strong pro Serbian sentiment led Greek society to perceive the leaders of the Bosnian Serbs as heroes and not as war criminals. Both ,his book and the nature of his reporting from Bosnia ,set Argyris Dinopoulos apart from the prevailing perception in Greece about the nature of the war.
The major events of the 1990s
Apart from the Yugoslav wars, Argyris Dinopoulos covered the major events of the 1990s all around the world. He was in Rwanda during the civil war and in Mexico during the uprising of the Zapatistas. He witnessed the coup against Mikhail Gorbachev in the dying Soviet Union, the riots in Albania, the deathly earthquakes in India, Turkey and Egypt. He was also present during environmental disasters such as the oil spill off the coast of the Shetland Islands and the disastrous blazes in Australia.
Afghanistan and Iraq
Following 9/11, Argyris Dinopoulos was one of the first foreign correspondents who managed to reach northern Afghanistan, after a long trek through central Asia, and to cover the first stage of the American intervention against the Taliban regime.
Two years later, in 2003, he was in Baghdad covering the American invasion. This was one more assignment in Iraq, following those in the 1990s. Hence, Argyris Dinopoulos covered all phases of the American- Iraqi tension.
Argyris Dinopoulos has been one of the first contributors of the CNN’s World Report broadcasting. In an era that audio-visual material was sent to Atlanta by mail!
In 1992 he attended in Atlanta, Georgia, a three-month course that CNN was offering to its contributors.
Politics and Journalism
Since 2003 Argyris Dinopoulos has been involved in politics without, however, abandoning journalism. Hence, in 2006 he was the producer of a documentary series that was shot in various locations in the Mediterranean and the Balkans. The subject of these documentary series was of particular interest to Hellenism. Some of the subjects discussed were the desecration of Greek Orthodox places of worship in occupied Cyprus, the exodus of Hellenism from Northern Epirus (South Albania), the last remnants of Hellenism in countries such as Italy, Syria, and Lebanon. Furthermore, the European prospects of Turkey and how Barcelona utilized the infrastructure of the 1992 Olympic Games.
His current political action
As a politician, either as a mayor or as an MP, Argyris Dinopoulos got involved in dealing with environmental issues often playing the role of an activist.
During his term in the city hall of Vrilissia he opposed the establishment of polluting energy units within the municipality of Vrilissia.
On other occasions there were even clashes with the police; however the goal of turning the land which was to be used for military purposes into parks was accomplished.
As a Member of the Parliament his main concerns are the pressing social issues. The fight against extreme poverty, drug rehabilitation, youth unemployment and the relation between executive power and the mass media.
