More than a quarter of a million Greeks voted on Sunday in the first round of the elections for the new leader of the center-left Movement for Change party (KINAL).
The elections took place after the death from the cancer of Fofi Gennimata in October. She had been president of the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) since 2015. Since 2017, she served as the president of KINAL, a coalition of center-left parties formed around PASOK.
According to the preliminary results, Nikos Androulakis, a Member of the European Parliament, has won the race in the first round gaining 37 percent of the votes. Former PM George Papandreou came second, on 27 percent. Andreas Loverdos is in third place at 25%. Three more candidates received less than 3,5 percent each.
Androulakis and Papandreou will fight it out next Sunday. Political commentators say that Androulakis is now in the pole position to become the new leader of the center-left in Greece.
Speaking to reporters on Sunday evening, Androulakis said that he will fight for the renewal and the unity of the party.
Greek center-left hopes for a comeback
Irrespective of the final result, they say that the mass participation of over 270,000 citizens in Sunday’s election, may help KINAL develop a new dynamism that could perhaps change the political landscape of Greece which is dominated by conservative New Democracy and leftist SYRIZA.
Born 1979 in Heraklion, Nikos Androulakis studied Civil engineering at the Democritus University of Thrace. He also gave courses in the School of Pedagogical and Technological Education.
Androulakis a life-long member of PASOK
In 2001 Androulakis became a member of the Central Council of PASOK Youth and in 2008 he was appointed member of the National Council of PASOK. On 4 March 2013, he was elected member of the central political committee of PASOK, which on its first session on 14 March 2013 elected him the new political secretary.
In the 2014 European Parliament election, Androulakis was elected one of two MEPs on PASOK’s Elia list. He affiliates with the parliamentary group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D) and is a member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs.
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