Venizelos Casts Loverdos Out of PASOK

With his party sinking fast for unrelenting support for austerity measures that are antithetical to its founding principles, PASOK Socialist leader Evangelos Venizelos ejected former minister Andreas Loverdos for trying to start a new movement.
Venizelos moved swiftly to boot Loverdos, who earlier on Dec. 3 said he was starting a group called the Radical Social-Democratic Alliance. He didn’t say if he wanted that to work within PASOK but Venizelos didn’t wait and declared that Loverdos was challenging his leadership and branching out to form a new party.
Loverdos told SKAI TV that the aim of the movement was to ultimately develop into a party, though he insisted that there was no rift with PASOK despite the open defiance of the Socialist leader. The former health minister had earlier urged Venizelos to reconsider his policies, saying a meeting was critical to discuss the “deep crisis” plaguing the party.
Venizelos, who had ejected a half dozen members in November for refusing to vote for more austerity measures in a $17.45 billion spending cut plan, and then lost another when lawmaker Mimis Androulakis quit, leaving PASOK with only 25 seats in Parliament, although the party won 33 in June.
“Loverdos founded his movement not as a trend or a movement within PASOK but as a springboard for a new party. “At a time when PASOK is striving to create a new ‘we,’ someone opted for a new ‘me.’ What a shame,” Venizelos said.
PASOK is barely registering at 5 percent of support after gaining 44 percent when it won the Prime Minister’s office in 2009, before then party leader and Premier George Papandreou imposed pay cuts, tax hikes and slashed pensions on the orders of international lenders.
That set off more than two years of protests, strikes and riots that forced him out of office and to quit as party leader earlier this year. He’s still a Member of Parliament while teaching at Harvard as well.
Venizelos has continued to back New Democracy Conservative leader and Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, with PASOK and the tiny Democratic Left acting as coalition partners. PASOK dissidents said that the Socialist leader is unwavering in his support for the government because some party members want to become ministers in a pending expected shake-up of the Cabinet.