Tsovolas pulls plug on party
Dimitris Tsovolas, a former PASOK minister who formed his own splinter group in 1995, has decided to suspend operations of the Democratic Social Movement (DIKKI) after it failed to get into Parliament for a second, consecutive time. The party’s political office agreed with him by a vote of 5-4 on Saturday. It will not be taking part in European Party elections in June. «Whether we like it or not, the Greek people have rejected DIKKI for reasons that they are aware of,» Tsovolas said in his proposal. «They gave us the message, for the second time in a row, that we should stop operating as a political party,» he said, referring to DIKKI’s failure to enter the Greek Parliament in both 2000 and 2004. It got 1.8 percent this time, well below the 3 percent threshold. DIKKI entered Parliament in 1996 with 4.2 percent of votes and entered the European Parliament (EP) in 1999 with 6.2 percent of votes. Tsovolas attributed DIKKI’s failure to the party’s weaknesses but also to what he termed as corruption in politics and the two-party system. A final decision on DIKKI’s fate is to be reached by the party’s central committee on Saturday.
