UPDATE: Greek Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos resigned on Monday afternoon, one day after he was elected the new president of socialist PASOK. Venizelos submitted his resignation after attending a cabinet meeting. The name of his successor is expected to be announced tomorrow Tuesday.
Earlier on Monday, Venizelos had officially taken the PASOK lead from George Papandreou.
They hugged and kissed each other twice. At the beginning and the end of the ceremony to mark the change of PASOK leadership. Former PASOK president George Papandreou and new PASOK president Evangelos Venizelos. The former PASOK president relaxed and without tie, the new PASOK president a bit more formal with tie. “Vaggelis, I wish you all the best” Papandreou told Venizelos. Relieved from the heavy duty of ruling countries or political parties, Papandreou is taking a totally different course. Recently he told BBC, that he has been thinking to open an academy and train politicians….
Papandreou – Venizelos
After the Papandreou era, Venzelos takes the helms of a heavily damaged political party, a party that took the country to the IMF. In public surveys of the last months PASOK do not receive more than 12 percent.
On Sunday Venizelos was rejoicingly elected the president of PASOK. He was the only candidate. Papandreou was kindly asked to leave the leadership by several party officials after he was also politely asked to leave the prime minister post in Nov 2011.
236,151 party members and friends participated in the voting process. Venizelos received 230,105 votes. The rest were ‘blank’ and invalid votes.
Greek media had speculated last week that PM Papademos would take also the post of Finance Minister, however this scenario seems to have been modified. To Vima claimed that Minister of Interior Tasos Yannitsis may be the next FinMin.
The date of the early parliamentary elections will be announced next week.
