Politicians’ pasts count in the present

When does a politician's past come under the statute of limitations? When are their own sins expunged and when is citizens' forgetfulness legitimate, even appropriate?

When, in the recent cabinet reshuffle, New Democracy lawmaker Makis Voridis became interior minister, an upgrade from his previous agriculture portfolio, the left-wing press gleefully resurrected his notorious far-right past: from his appointment as leader of the youth wing of the far-right National Political Union by party leader Georgios Papadopoulos, the jailed leader of the successful 1967 military coup, at the expense of ousted Nikos Michaliolakos, later leader of Golden Dawn, in 1985, to his carrying an ax during a brawl with left-wing students at the Athens Law School, his invitation to French far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen in the 1990s, his collaboration with notorious Holocaust denier Konstantinos...