SYRIZA’s euroskeptic wing takes 30% of vote in election for party’s central committee
SYRIZA’s leftist wing, which believes the party should not rule out a return to the drachma, received 30 percent support in the vote to elect 200 members to SYRIZA’s central committe.
Although the vote took place on Sunday, results were published on Monday and showed that the unified list of candidates backed by leader Alexis Tsipras received 67.6 percent of the votes and that the Aristeri Platforma (Left Platform) led by MP Panayiotis Lafazanis (photo) got 30.15 percent, giving it 60 seats on the central committee.
Lafazanis’s proposal that the party should leave open the option of quitting the euro was rejected during a vote at the congress on Saturday.
Tsipras was elected leader of the party with 74 percent of the vote on Sunday after convincing the majority of SYRIZA’s factions to disband so members could unite behind a centralized decision-making process aimed at making the leftists more electable.
The three candidates for the central committee who gathered the most votes are all serving MPs and economists by profession: Yiannis Dragasakis, Euclid Tsakalotos and Yiannis Milios.
