No letup in ND turmoil after failed vote Sunday
The row over New Democracy’s failed leadership election rumbled on Wednesday, with former leader Evangelos Meimarakis calling for the IT company that had been awarded the contract to organize the vote to be investigated, while some conservative officials did not rule out the possibility that the process was sabotaged.
Meimarakis, who stepped aside on Tuesday so MP Yiannis Plakiotakis could take over as interim leader, asked his successor to take legal action against the software company, Info Solutions, “to safeguard and protect the standing, respectability and interests of the party.”
Meimarakis, one of four candidates that was due to stand on Sunday, invited his three rivals to raise any objections to his proposal if they had any. The former leader has attempted to implicate his predecessor, Antonis Samaras, in Sunday’s fiasco by suggesting that the IT company had been used by the former prime minister.
This has created tension between those in the party still loyal to Samaras and those backing Meimarakis. Dora Bakoyannis, who is supporting Meimarakis, appeared to suggest that foul play may have been behind Sunday’s failure. She argued that there had been problems with the voting system in 2009, when Samaras edged her out to become New Democracy president.
New Democracy’s secretary Andreas Papamimikos, who resigned as head of the party’s electoral committee, refused to rule out the possibility that someone had tampered with the software. “I would not bet my life on whether there was a case of sabotage or whether there was a technical problem,” he told Mega TV. “That is why we are asking the justice system to give its opinion.”
