Kammenos meetings fuel political speculation
A decision by Defense Minister Panos Kammenos to receive the leader of a minor nationalist party and an independent MP planning her own right-leaning movement at the ministry on Friday fueled speculation about a possible bid to form a right-wing movement ahead of possible snap elections.
Kammenos also leads the right-wing Independent Greeks (ANEL) which shares power with Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’s leftist SYRIZA but appears unlikely to enter Parliament in the next elections, according to opinion polls.
The official reason given for Kammenos’s meetings with Failos Kranidiotis, a lawyer and former aide to ex-prime minister Antonis Samaras who leads a small party called New Right, and Katerina Papakosta, a former conservative New Democracy MP, was to brief them on developments in Greek-Turkish relations and growing tensions in the Aegean.
But ANEL’s dropping popularity is widely believed to have been Kammenos’s motive.
