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Oldest serving presidents

• Message 1.Β 

  Posted by baz (U14258304) on Thursday, 8th September 2011

  I've just read that Eamonn De Valera, who was born in 1882, was president of the Irish Republic from 1959 to 1973, which would have made him 90 years old while still in office.
  I don't know of any other president, democratically elected or not, being in office while in their 90s. Am I right?

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• Message 2

  , in reply to message 1.

  Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Thursday, 8th September 2011

  baz
  
  You are probably right.. But I am not sure when the Irish Constitution turned the Presidency into a largely ceremonial one.. De Valera, of course, had done a great deal to shape Ireland's destiny in his younger days.. And if the constitution had been changed there may well have been some kind of tendency to look to DV as the Germans looked to Hindenberg during the crisis years of the Weimar Republic.
  
  But when the Irish President greeted the Queen and Prince Philip- himself now ninety years old- there seemed to be some comparability between their functions.
  
  Figure head Heads of State can be quite elderly ..What about Mao Tse Tung? Or Kim il Sung?
  
  Cass

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• Message 3

  , in reply to message 1.

  Posted by Daniel-K (U2684833) on Thursday, 8th September 2011

  Hastings Banda was born in February 1898, he became President of Malawi in 1966 and continued uninterrupted in that office until May 1994 when he was 96 years old. He died at the age of 99 in 1997.

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