Outspoken Greek defense minister Panos Kammenos Thursday again promised that he’ll resign from the Cabinet post and leave the coalition government if the provision Prespa agreement is ratified by the parliament in the neighboring former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (fYRoM), continuing his political “tightrope act” of opposing the bilateral pact but at the same time continuing to prop up the poll-trailing Tsipras government.
Hours later he “changed gears” and said he would actually resign if the agreement reached Greece’s Parliament, not if it is passed by the neighboring country’s legislature.
Kammenos, who founded and heads up the small rightwing populist Independent Greeks (AN.EL) party that serves as the junior partner in the “strange bedfellows” coalition government, is a vocal opponent of the agreement – signed by the Tsipras and Zoran Zaev governments, the latter in fYRoM, to finally resolve the “name issue” bedeviling relations between the two neighbors since the early 1990s.
With general elections next year and with his party considered as a long shot to re-enter Greece’s Parliament, Kammenos risks losing whatever right-of-center grassroots support he retains by opting for a “softer line” on the agreement, while at the same time appearing loath to cause a snap election by withholding his support for the government in Parliament. At least three out of the seven AN.EL deputies (including Kammenos) remaining in the party’s Parliamentary group have hinted that they will vote in favor of the agreement, regardless of what party leader and DM Kammenos decides.
