A mini reshuffle was announced on Friday in Athens by the Tsipras government’s spokesman, with up-until-now Alternate FM Giorgos Katrougalos promoted as the top minister of foreign affairs.
The development means that Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras will give up the portfolio, which he held after the hasty resignation of Nikos Kotzias late last year due to fallout from the Prespa agreement.
One common denominator of a trio “new faces” on the Cabinet is their previous close affiliation with the once dominant PASOK party, the socialist and social democrat political mainstay in Greece for three decades.
For instqance, MP Costas Barkas take over the deputy labor ministry portfolio, in place of SYRIZA cadre Nasos Iliopoulos, who is the hard left party’s candidate for the municipality of Athens.
Thanos Moraitis, a long-time PASOK cadre who also served in George Papandreou’s Cabinet (2009-11), was tapped as an out-of-Parliament deputy infrastructure minister. Another erstwhile PASOK cadre, Angelos Tolkas, was appointed as deputy migration policy minister.
Current SYRIZA MP Sia Anagnostopoulou was appointed as alternate FM, with European policy her portfolio.
Finally, Eleftheria Hatzigeorgiou was appointed as the Macedonia-Thrace minister, a mostly symbolic seat that is based in the northern port city of Thessaloniki. She takes over from Katerina Notopoulou, a young SYRIZA cadre who emerged on the national limelight as the head of Tsipras’ newly created office in Thessaloniki – where he works when he visits the city – and then as an unelected Cabinet member.
Notopoulou is SYRIZA’s candidate for the Thessaloniki mayor’s race.
She and Iliopoulos appear struggling in the first opinion polls gauging the municipal races in both Athens and Thessaloniki, with the SYRIZA candidates polling in the single-digit territory, and coming in alternately third or fourth amongst the announced candidates so far.
naftemporiki.gr
