ND lawmaker scrapped from party parliamentary group
New Democracy leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis has removed Katerina Papakosta from the party’s parliamentary group for straying from the party line.
Mitsotakis announced his decision in a tweet on Thursday morning saying that he had informed the Parliament Speaker Nikos Voutsis that Papakosta will no longer be a part of New Democracy’s parliamentary group.
Papakosta had strayed from the party line – the third time in the last few months – during a parliament discussion on Wednesday of a defense bill by insisting that New Democracy would have to vote in favor of several of the bill’s provisions.
She also appeared to back the Defense Minister Panos Kammenos who earlier had a heated exchange with the New Democracy vice president Adonis Georgiadis.
Party sources said that Papakosta chose to communicate her disagreement during a plenary session instead of informing ND’s parliamentary group that had met just a few hours earlier.
“It was totally unjustifiable to choose to do it during the parliament’s plenary session instead of doing so during the meeting of the party body," the sources said, which added that Papakosta had already received two warnings for similar actions in the past.
