Former Interior Minister Socrates Hasikos passed away early Monday morning at the age of 64, after a long battle with cancer.
Socrates Hasikos was born in Nicosia on April 12, 1956. He grew up in Kato Dikomo. He studied law at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. He was a businessman. From 2003 to February 2013 he was the Chairman of the Board of AlfaMediaGroup. He was the owner of the newspaper Alithia, the radio station Sport-Fm and a major shareholder of the television station Omega.
He was married to Elli Koulermou. He has two sons and a daughter.
He was vice president of DISY and a member of the party's Politburo.
He was first elected MP in the 1991 parliamentary elections in the Kyrenia constituency with the Democratic Alarm-Liberal Party coalition for the 1996th parliamentary term. He was re-elected in the XNUMX parliamentary elections with the same coalition for the XNUMXth parliamentary term.
On August 25, 1999, he was appointed Minister of Defense in the government of Glafkos Clerides, a position he held until February 28, 2003, when the term of the government ended.
He was re-elected MP with DISY in the parliamentary elections of 2006 for the THP Parliamentary Term. He did not claim re-election in the 2011 parliamentary elections for the XNUMXth parliamentary term. As an MP, he chaired the Parliamentary Contact Committee of the Government-Parliament-PASYDY, Deputy Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee for Monitoring Development Plans and Controlling Public Expenditure, member of the Parliamentary Committee on Defense and member of the Parliamentary Committee on Legal Affairs.
On March 1, 2013, Nikos Anastasiadis was appointed Minister of Interior in the government, a position he held until May 10, 2017, when he submitted his resignation for personal and family reasons. During his tenure, he served as Minister of Defense for two weeks, after the death of the then Minister of Defense Tasos Mitsopoulos.