ND MP faces expulsion from party for criticizing policy via Twitter
A New Democracy politician who served as deputy labor minister for just a few days before resigning has been ousted from the party?s parliamentary group for comments he published on Twitter.
Nikos Nikolopoulos wrote a series of tweets on Friday criticizing the government?s decision to agree to 11.5 billion euros of cuts over the next two years.
?The strategic dead-end is obvious,? the MP tweeted. ?The hope of renegotiation was just a dream. What can a breatless people expect? Mercy or punishment from the troika??
The parliamentarian also expressed concern that the new round of cuts would depend the recession.
?Recession for the Guinness Book of World Records,? he wrote. ?Our country has more consecutive years of recession than any other in the world. The country just can?t take any more.?
Prime Minister Antonis Samaras ousted Nikolopoulos from ND?s parliamentary group. The conservative leader also ordered the MP to pass before a disciplinary committee that would decide whether he should be ejected from the party as well.
Sources close to Samaras said that since the day Nikolopoulos, an MP in the Achaia area of the Peloponnese, resigned from his post, he has systematically trying to get himself thrown out of the party.
The MP resigned from the Labor Ministry on July 9, citing disappointment with the government?s decision not to negotiate more aggressively with the troika.
?The sole reason for my resignation is my personal conviction that the issue of renegotiating with the troika, as well as the correction of significant distortions in labor, pension, social security and welfare issues, should have been emphatically put on the table from the start,? he wrote in his resignation letter.
