Stavroula Xoulidou, a lawmaker from right-wing Independent Greeks party, claimed that she was offered 3 million euro to vote for Greece’s next President. Xoulidou made her claims during a late night show on Tuesday short after party president Panos Kammenos had claimed that there were attempts from the side of coalition government party Nea Dimokratia to bribe one of his deputies to secure the vote for the President and therefore hinder Greece from going to snap polls in March 2015.
Greek Parliament is set to elect the country’s next President in March 2015. Opposition parties, among them SYRIZa and Independent Greeks, vehemently oppose that the current Parliament elects the next President and want snap elections. Coalition government of Nea Dimokratia and PASOK desperately try to secure the 180 votes needed to the President’s election. ND and PASOK hold currently 154 seats in a parliament of 300. According to Greek Constitution.If the Parliament fails to elect the next president, the Parliament has to be dissolved and new elections should take place.
According to Panos Kammenos, the Independent Greeks MP made her revelations during a meeting of the parliamentary group last September and the the party tried to trap the offerer, however without success.
Stavroula Xoulidou claimed that the ones who made the offer spoke of some 2-3million euro and told her that the money would solve all her problems. At the beginning of her claims she spoke of a “Blue party official” -with Blue being the color of PM Samara’s Nea Domokratia -. Later, she even named a person, somebody who is member of the association of historic books writers and allegedly a ND official in a local branch.
She went even further and claimed that she had received an e-mail by a ND official, an email claiming that another Independent Greek MP, Panayiotis Melas, had been bribed and that he would vote for the next President.
Indeed, during the IndepGreeks convention last weekend, Melas had said that he could differentiate himself from the party line towards the President’s election.
Panayiotis Melas threatens to file a law suit against Xoulidou, the whole of Independent Greeks is boiling with suspicion against each other, and Nea Dimokratia lawmakers are trying to cover their back from the storm that broke over their heads.
Odd enough – but not for Greece- a prosecutor investigated in October claims posed left-wing SYRIZA that “some lawmakers got bribed in order to vote for the next president.” Several SYRIZA lawmakers testified in the case, the president of Democratic Left but also Panos Kammenos. The investigation brought no result, the file was closed.
After Xoulidi’s specific claims, the Supreme Court prosecutor has started to investigate again the issue and is about to open again the file of the first investigation as the claims – call them “revelations” – are much to serious to go unnoticed by Justice, the political world and the voters.
Indepentent Greeks were formed beginning of 2012, after several Nea Demokratia MPs were either expelled form the party for down-voting the Troika-loan agreements and left the ND due to disagreement. IN June 2012 elections the party entered the Parliament with 20 deputies but today it has only 14.
