Zoe Konstantopoulou

Radical Left Coalition (SYRIZA) MP Nikos Voutsis was elected new Parliamentary president on Sunday by 181 MPs. 113 deputies cast a blank vote and 3 ballots were rendered invaled. There were three abstentions.

Combative outgoing Parliament president Zoe Konstantopoulou is apparently leaving her post with a “bang”, days before she is replaced. The outspoken leftist lawmaker failed to get elected with the newly formed Popular Unity party in the Sept. 20 ballot.

Stavros Theodorakis leader of centrist party ‘To Potami’ (River) called on the Greek people to turn their backs on the other political forces and support his political party to reach third place in the September 20 elections. During his cross-channel television press conference, Wednesday Theodorakis set the goal of his party at 10% of the votes.

The far-left anti-memorandum bloc that emerged after the split with leftist SYRIZA appears to have attracted the support of the high-flying Spanish party once dubbed as SYRIZA’s “sister party” on the Iberian peninsula, Podemos.

MEP Sophia Sakorafa, who had been elected at the European Parliament under the SYRIZA ballot, announced she would leave the leftist party in a statement released Friday. The former champion javelin thrower and close friend of Zoe Konstantopoulou is the second MEP that leaves SYRIZA after Nikos Chountis had joined the new Popular Party.

Bellicose former president of the Greek parliament Zoe Konstantopoulou proves she has some sense of humour, as she employs self-sarcasm in her 40 sec. TV spot to get the message of Popular Unity party that the Greek debt is unserviceable and should not be paid.

Former president of the Greek parliament Zoe Konstantopoulou heralded the creation of a European front against austerity and a ‘Plan B’, with the participation of former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis and French left politician Jean-Luc Melenchon, during an interview on Greek TV station Ant-1, Thursday morning.

Speaking at a press conference in the framework of the 2015 Thessaloniki EXPO, leader of Popular Unity part, Panagiotis Lafazanis said the his former party SYRIZA had been forced to a ‘humiliating resignation’.

Combative Parliament President Zoe Konstantopoulou, now days away from the end of her tenure due to snap elections, launched into a stinging attack against her former SYRIZA comrades during an appearance in a TV newscast on Thursday.
“It would have been honorable for him (former PM Alexis Tsipras) to have asked for the Greek people’s mandate before he voted for the memorandum”.

A high-profile and mostly expected “divorce” between brash Parliament president Zoe Konstantopoulou and Alexis Tsipras’ SYRIZA party was finalized on Monday, with the former the latest cadre to bolt what radical critics now term as the “leftist alibi” for the third memorandum.