Skourletis, Voutsis announce their departure from SYRIZA-PA

Panos Skourletis, a senior cadre within main opposition SYRIZA-Progressive Alliance who has served as a former minister and MP, as well as a former secretary of the party's Central Committee, on Friday announced his decision to leave SYRIZA-PA. 

In his statement, Skourletis said that "the forces that have currently prevailed in SYRIZA-PA are carrying out a plan of division and rupture that the new leader Stefanos Kasselakis - who has had no contact with either the Left or with politics - has undertaken to complete". He also claimed that "the way that has been chosen leads nowhere, is disastrous and leads us outside the framework of the ideas, principles and positions of the renewalist and radical left and is one I am not willing to follow."

Skourletis also noted that he chooses to align himself with "the tens of SYRIZA members and cadres that are daily departing, defending their political dignity and striving for a better world".

Founding member Nikos Voutsis also announces decision to leave party

Nikos Voutsis, a former parliament president, former minister and one of the founders of main opposition SYRIZA-Progressive Alliance on Friday announced his decision to leave the party in a letter to SYRIZA Central Committee Secretary Rania Svigou and Alternate Secretary Giorgos Vassiliadis. He also said that, given his decision, he will not be attending the Central Committee meeting at the weekend.

In his letter, Voutsis said that "with this letter I will no longer be a member of the party, of which I was co-founder and one of those who helped shape its identity and policies until today".

Presenting the reasons for his decision, Voutsis noted that SYRIZA-PA "instead of the necessary regrouping and rallying of all its forces, is now being subjected to a situation that resembles political irreparable harm. It is becoming, with the sole responsibility of its new leader and the new leadership group, a party that is for now distancing itself from the Left and in time will be jostling in the area of the political centre."

AMNA