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Evangelos Meimarakis submitted officially his candidacy for New Democracy leadership shortly after 18.30 on Thursday.

“I know the difficulties and negativism of Greek citizens, I hear suggestions that some suggest simply because they want people like them,” Mr. Meimarakis said adding that New Democracy must look now towards the future.

Outspoken conservative New Democracy deputy and former minister Adonis Georgiadis is the third contender for the party’s helm, announcing his candidacy on Monday evening.

Georgiadis is a relative newcomer to ND, arriving from the rightist-populist LA.OS party before it collapsed in the 2012 election. He represents the right-wing of the party.

Central Macedonian Region Chief Apostolos Tzitzikostas, aged 37, announced his candidacy for the leadership of the New Democracy (ND) Party on Sunday night. The young man’s bid for the leadership, following that of Kyriakos Mitsotakis, aged 47, lowers the age bar for the party’s control from current leader Evangelos Meimarakis, aged 62.

Friday’s latest opinion poll, 72 hours before voting precincts open on Sunday, shows leftist SYRIZA with 24.5 percent of respondents’ vote to 24 percent for conservative New Democracy party.

Three more opinion polls by … well-known polling companies were released on Thursday, with the first (by Metron Analysis) giving conservative New Democracy a razor-slim 0.3 percentage point lead over leftist SYRIZA, while another (by Alco) had the exact same difference, but with SYRIZA ahead – 25.3 to 25 percent for ND.

The third opinion poll (Pulse) shows a tie, at 28 percent.

All eyes were on the Greek political leader’s debate that took place on Monday, ahead of the snap elections set for September 20. With polls showing that neither of the two rivals are likely to secure a majority, both Radical Left Coalition (SYRIZA) leader Alexis Tsipras and conservative main opposition New Democracy party head Vangelis Meimarakis wary of alienating voters.

An opinion poll commissioned by Proto Thema, Greece’s best-selling newspaper, shows a razor-thin lead for leftist SYRIZA over conservative New Democracy and eight (!) political parties entering Parliament.

As with previous opinion polls released over the past week, a “derby” appears in hand for the snap Sept. 20 election.

Candidates continued to criss-cross the country on Friday, with snap elections in just over a week in what — hopefully — will be the last political campaign in crisis-plagued Greece in 2015.

Wednesday will witness the first and only televised debate of the seven political leaders whose parties were represented in the outgoing Parliament, sans the ultra-nationalist Golden Dawn party.
The political “gab fest” will come days before the third time Greek voters are asked to cast their ballot in 2015.

Resigned prime minister Alexis Tsipras held at press conference on Monday from the same city where last year he unveiled his now infamous …Thessaloniki program — boosting social spending, state investments and scrapping the memorandum — although this year’s agenda was predictably dominated by his seven months in power and the third memorandum he negotiated and signed.