PASOK leader Fofi Gennimata has gathered the majority of votes on Sunday elections that were held in order to choose a new leader for Greece’s socialist part PASOK.
According to amna.gr, with 50 percent of the polling stations counted -which corresponds to about 70,000 votes- the results are:
Fofi Gennimata 46.84%
Nikos Androulakis 27.05%
Giorgos Kaminis 12.06%
Stavros Theodorakis 6.3%
Yiannis Maniatis 3.35%
Yiannis Ragousis 1.9%
Konstantinos Gatsios 1.3%
Apostolos Pondas 0.4%
Dimitris Tziotis 0.18%
These results may change as more votes are counted. To win, Gennimata has to secure 50 percent plus one vote. If she doesn’t achieve it, the second round will be held between the two candidates that secured most votes.
Speaking after the initial result was announced, the head of the Committee, Nikos Alivizatos, said participation exceeded the target of 200,000 participants. Voting was extended in a few polling stations due to the number of participants.
“Our initiative has been justified,” Gennimata said in a first statement after the first results.
“It is a big success, regardless of the winner,” Alivizatos, said on the result. “People showed they want something truly reformist between New Democracy and SYRIZA. Today’s result is the best response to the cynics and those who derided the process,” he added.
After the great defeat in 2012 elections, PASOK changed its name into Democratic Alliance and is seeking a new revival of the good old times when it was ruling Greece over decades. It also seeks a new place in the country’s political landscape, whether it will remain socialist or be plain center-left.
It iwll be up to the new leader to decide which path the party will follow. However, the high participation of voters must have set left-wing SYRIZA on alert, as it gained power in 2015 with the help of disappointed PASOK voters.
PS If you ask me, PASOK will be able to regain power only if it will be visible that SYRIZA will suffer a big defeat in the next elections. it is in PASOK voters’ DNA to seek a place in the sun that secures power.
Gennimata had said that she would not cooperate with conservative New Democracy.
It will be interesting to see in the final results, the voters’ age groups. In recent talks with former PASOK voters who voted for SYRIZA twice in 2015, I realized that they have started to flirt again with the party they abandoned because it brought the bailout agreements in 2010. My interlocutors were middle-class and middle aged with the youngest to be 58-60 years old.
Will PASOK be able to win young generations after it went down as the party that ‘established corruption‘ in Greece?
