Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras on Monday morning abruptly ended an initiative, ostensibly being promoted by Parliment President Nikos Voutsis, to change the legislature’s rules in order to maintain perks and privileges of smaller parties, even when the latter lost the minimum number of MPs required to constitute parliamentary groups.
Speculation was rampant in Athens over the past week that Tsipras had instructed Voutsis, who hails from his ruling SYRIZA party, to change Parliament’s rules – via a majority vote by relevant committee members – in order to maintain parliamentary groups for Panos Kammenos and Stavros Theodorakis.
Both political leaders and MPs saw their smaller parties, right-wing ANEL and centrist Potami, respectively, essentially dissolved over internal differences regarding the contentious Prespa agreement, which was ratified by a slim majority last week.
In a letter to Voutsis, the leftist Greek premier emphasized that “I have never been blackmailed by anyone.” He was referring to opposition and media criticism that he was being politically “blackmailed” by Kammenos, his one-time coalition partner and up-until-recently defense minister in the “strange bedfellows” coalition ruling from January 2015 until last month.
