ND blocks Elena Akrita’s candidacy for Parliament’s vice-presidency

The Greek Parliament will henceforth operate without a fifth vice-president, after New Democracy’s decision to “block” the election of Elena Akrita, who had been nominated by SYRIZA. The party, as the fifth-largest parliamentary force, was entitled to nominate the MP of its choice to fill the position on the parliamentary presidium.

In the relevant roll-call vote, out of a total of 288 MPs present, 119 voted in favour, while 169 voted “present”.

The ruling party, despite having the option either to accept Elena Akrita’s candidacy or even to express its opposition without affecting the outcome of the vote, ultimately chose a peculiar kind of… face control over an institutional right of the opposition: the right to determine which person will represent it on the Parliament’s presidium.

New Democracy MPs, apparently following a decision taken centrally, took part in the vote held at 12:30. In fact, several MPs from the ruling party participated through postal voting. As a result, Elena Akrita’s candidacy failed to secure the required 50% plus one of the votes cast by MPs.

It should be noted that New Democracy, as mentioned above, had the option of abstaining from the vote so that Elena Akrita could be elected even with the minimum required number of votes, namely 75. This was particularly the case given that opposition parties had backed her candidacy.

Attempting to justify New Democracy’s stance, the party’s parliamentary spokesperson invoked MPs’ right to “opinion and judgement”. He argued that “perhaps, in a forthcoming amendment to the Parliament’s Rules of Procedure, parties could propose abolishing the voting process and having the president and vice-presidents appointed through decisions of parliamentary groups, as is the case with the appointment of parliamentary spokespersons. At this moment, however, under the current Rules of Procedure of Parliament, it is the exclusive responsibility of the Plenary to vote ‘yes’ or ‘present’ on the nominations.”

Nevertheless, it is worth noting that for days there had been leaks from New Democracy’s parliamentary group suggesting that the ruling party would not vote in favour of Elena Akrita’s candidacy. Instead, it would choose to vote “present” in the ballot.