At 50, ruling New Democracy is divided

Relations between Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and his predecessors Antonis Samaras and Kostas Karamanlis, long tense, reached a breaking point Friday.

That day, October 4, was the founding date of the party by then-PM Konstantinos Karamanlis, Kostas Karamanlis' uncle. The founder, just back from an 11-year self-imposed exile abroad, was trying to stabilize the foundations of democracy in a country just freed from the yoke of military dictatorship. 

The elder Karamanlis, instead of simply resurrecting the old National Radical Union, his pre-dictatorship party, made a conscious break with the past in order to set up a more modern, center-right party.

The two ND veterans - Samaras has been an MP continuously since 1977 - chose to decline, and return, the invitations of their successor to celebrate New Democracy's 50th anniversary. They called political...