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Democratic Left Faces Challenges

At a time when the so-called Center-Left is trying to pull itself together, one of its main pillars, the Democretic Left (DEMAR) is showing a total lack of cohesion. Following the resignation of its leader, Fotis Kouvelis, it did not take long for teeth to be openly bared at the party’s Central Committee meeting on Saturday, "forcing" Fotis Kouvelis to resume his leadership duties at least until the next party congress.

Kouvelis  defended his party’s role in the coalition government on Saturday when a member of its executive committee announced his departure from the party blaming its poor performance at the polls on Kouvelis’ embrace of neo-liberal ideas while he was still a junior partner in the coalition government of Antonis Samaras and Evangelos Venizelos..

At the start of  the central committee meeting in Athens, Andreas Nefeloudis said he was leaving Democratic Left because he felt it was no longer committed to its founding principle of creating a left-wing government.

“Our party is legitimizing the hardest neoliberal decisions that have been taken since the fall of the junta [in 1974],” said Nefeloudis. “It would be dishonest of me to to continue to be another voice of dissent within the party.”

Three MPs have left the party since it became part of the coalition government in June, taking its total number of MPs to 14.

Kouvelis insisted his party was right to make some compromises, suggesting that all Greek governments for the foreseeable future would be coalition administrations.

But his remarks did little to calm the voices of dissent that multiplied on Sunday despite the fact that a majority of the Central Committee rejected Kouvelis’ resignation saying he should remain as president of DIMAR at least until an extraordinary congress in September decides about his fate and the future of the party.

A strong minority faction calling itself the “Reformist Tendency” headed by MP Spiros Lykoudis said that the party congress “under these circumstances would be a sham” and withdrew from the deliberations calling them “degrading” in a written statement which accused the leadership of failing “to approach the tragic result of the elections with the required sobriety and responsibility”.