Former Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras resigned from the leadership of his party after a landslide win of the NO vote his party strongly opposed in the Greek referendum.
The centre-right wing New Democracy party faced a leadership crisis after an overwhelming NO result in Sunday’s referendum.
New Democracy and its former leader Antonis Samaras campaigned strongly in favor of a YES vote to a take-it-or-leave-it bailout proposal offered to Greece by its creditors, losing by a landslide on Sunday’s Greek referendum.
Antonis Samaras was Greece’s prime minister from June 2012 to January 2012, and will be known as the leader who under pressure from Greece’s creditors allowed austerity measures that crippled the average Greek citizen.
According to New Democracy sources, longtime New Democracy party member Dora Mpakogianni, who also served as Minister of Foreign Affairs from 2006 to 2009, contacted Samaras on Saturday urging him to step down from the position to help prevent a NO victory.
Nikos Dendias, a New Democracy party member and former Minister of Public Order and Citizen Protection, made a series of tweets after Sunday’s first estimations slamming Samaras’ choices.
“The responsibility for the results is not the same for all of us” one tweet read while Dendias later tweeted “Let us protect the political heritage of Konstantinos Karamanlis in the morning” and “Today is not the right moment to discuss what we will do at New Democracy. We will look at that tomorrow.”
Furthermore, Sakis Ioannidis, the President of the Organization of the New Democracy Youth, posted a message on his Facebook wall in which he notes that Greece will go through tough times and calls for unity among Greeks.
“Only one thing is certain, that the old political regime, as it had been structured, is being erased” the post read.
Evangelos Meimarakis, has been appointed interim leader of ‘New Democracy,’ until the party convened to elect its new leader.
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