Former SYRIZA finance minister set to announce leadership bid

Former SYRIZA Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos is set to announce his bid for the leadership of the party on Friday.

“Euclid Tsakalotos will announce his intent to run in the upcoming leadership contest on Friday, July 14”, stated a press release from his office on Wednesday.

Earlier on Wednesday, SYRIZA MP Efi Achtsioglou, considered one of the frontrunners  to succeed former leader Alexis Tsipras, announced her candidacy.

SYRIZA's Charitsis not running for party leadership, supports Achtsioglou's candidacy

SYRIZA-Progressive Alliance Deputy Alexis Charitsis said he supports the candidacy of fellow deputy Efi Achtsioglou for the party's leadership, in posts on social media on Wednesday.

Charitsis also noted he would not be a candidate for the leadership himself, thanking fellow party members who proposed he run. "I am honored by their appreciation and very moved. But I have decided differently. I am not going to be a candidate," he posted, adding that "I am committed to participating to our new collective path with all my strength."

Speaking of Achtsioglou, who announced her candidacy on Wednesday ahead of the party's Central Committee meeting on the weekend, he said that her candidacy expresses a fundamental reinvention of the Left, a renewed strategy, and an understanding of the vital needs of the Greek people.

The former minister also referred to Alexis Tsipras' decision to step down as leader after the party received disappointingly low results in the May 21 and June 25 elections. He called Tsipras' resignation "the comletion of a great and exciting historical cycle that grew the Left and politically shook Greece and Europe." The party, he said, "faces a great challenge: that of a fundamental new beginning."

AMNA