PASOK Lawmaker Konstantinopoulos resigns parliamentary seat after expulsion
Lawmaker Odysseas Konstantinopoulos announced Friday that he will resign his parliamentary seat representing Arcadia, a day after being expelled from the parliamentary group of the Panhellenic Socialist Movement.
The decision to remove him from the party’s parliamentary group was taken Thursday by PASOK leader Nikos Androulakis.
In a statement addressed to Androulakis, Konstantinopoulos said he had informed the party leadership and the parliamentary group of his decision before notifying the Speaker of Parliament.
“It is my firm belief that members of parliament serve the people and the party with which they were elected,” he said, noting that he had been elected in Arcadia with PASOK since 2009.
Konstantinopoulos added that although he had expressed his own views on various issues, he had always aligned himself with the party’s majority decisions.
He also said he would ask the Speaker of the Hellenic Parliament to allow him to deliver a final speech during the session to elect PASOK’s new deputy speaker, whom he said he intends to support.
“I believe that political parties are pillars of democracy, and this depends on our actions, credibility and consistency between words and deeds,” he said in his statement.
