Well-known sports columnist and football pundit Antonis Panoutsos and writer and former SYRIZA PM Petros Tatsopoulos will be running as candidates for conservative opposition party New Democracy in the next general elections.
Then two men met with ND president Kyriakos Mitsotakis on Tuesday to discuss the matter.
According to ND, Mr. Mitsotakis’s goal is to expand the party and broaden its appeal to voters by including candidates from outside the traditional ideological confines of the party.
Mr Tatsopoulos will be running in the northern district of Athens’s second constituency, while Panoutos will stand for election in the western region of Attica.

According to ND, both men have been supporting the efforts of the party, via their speech and writing in the public arena, to bring about the necessary political change in Greece. They both gladly accepted the personal invitation of Mr Mitotakis to join the party and help.

It should be noted that Petros Tatsopoulos was elected with the leftist party SYRIZA in 2012, but departed in January 2014 after denouncing the party over a number of practices, including brinkmanship on the part of its leading team and its populist rhetoric as an opposition party, its strategic partnership with right-wing populist party ANEL, as well as its tolerance towards the phenomena of violence. Tatsopoulos recorded his experiences with SYRIZA in a book called “I was there too”.