Stefanos Manos

Stefanos Manos
Στέφανος Μάνος
President of Drassi
In office March 2009 – June 2012
Deputy	Antypas Karipoglou
Preceded by	Position established
Succeeded by	Antypas Karipoglou
Minister of Finance
In office 7 August 1992 – 13 October 1993
Prime Minister	Konstantinos Mitsotakis
Preceded by	Ioannis Paleokrassas
Succeeded by	Georgios Gennimatas
Personal details
Born	(1939-12-20) 20 December 1939 Athens, Greece
Political party	New Democracy (Before 1999) Liberals (1999–2001) Independent (2001–2004) Panhellenic Socialist Movement (2004–2009) Drassi (2009–present)
Alma mater	ETH Zurich Harvard University

Stefanos Manos (Greek: Στέφανος Μάνος; born 1939) is a Greek politician, former member of the Hellenic Parliament, and a former government minister.

Career

His political career started in the New Democracy party, for which he became a Member of Parliament in 1977. During the 1980s he would be the unpopular forerunner of Greek privatization. In April 1999, he formed his own party, The Liberals, but following its unsuccessful performance in the elections held in June for the European parliament (1,62%), he returned to the Hellenic Parliament firstly in 2000 as MP in co-operation with the major party of New Democracy, and again in the 2004 elections as independent by the statewide list but surprisingly on a rival PASOK ticket.

After he suspended his Liberals' operation in 2002, he established in 2009 his new own party, Drassi, which he continues to lead. Heading Drassi, he took part in the 2009 European parliament election (0,76%). In May 2012, Drassi merged with the newly formed party Recreate Greece for the 2012 elections.

Manos is a notable critic of profligate government spending and waste. He is famous for saying in 1992, while he was Greek finance minister, that "it would be cheaper for Greece to send every rail passenger to their destination by taxi", a quote which was used by Michael Lewis in his book Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World.