The first “casualty” vis-a-vis political parties in Greece after Sunday’s European Parliament election appears to be PASOK party leader Nikos Androulakis, who on Wednesday faced a chorus of calls for a party leadership election and open disappointment over the socialist party’s result.
PASOK’s lackluster showing of 12.79% and third place, again falling behind leftist SYRIZA, which came in second with 14.92%, opened public discussions about the party’s leadership and future course.
Nikos Papandreou, the brother of former prime minister George Papandreou and son of PASOK founder and three-time premier Andreas Papandreou, directly called for a leadership election. Papandreou, who received nearly 124,000 votes to win the first of three MEP seats allocated to PASOK, blamed Androulakis for the election failure, as he outlined, and called for an internal PASOK leadership election by its grassroots.
Long-time party cadre and MP Odysseas Konstantakopoulos proposed what he called a “strong restart”, in a letter to the PASOK political council secretary, essentially pointing to the need for an internal leadership election.
Similar statements were made by another two high-profile MPs, Pavlos Yeroulanos and Nadia Giannakopoulou, among others.
