Veteran politician and past minister Evangelos Venizelos bid “adieu” to the post of president of socialist PASOK over the weekend, opening the way for a party leader election. However, the sharp-tongued Venizelos said he wasn’t leaving politics.

Three candidates for the leadership of the once dominant Greek political party after 1981 – but now mired in single-digit support in the ballot box and polls – are veteran PASOK cadres Andreas Loverdos, Fofi Gennimata and Odysseus Konstantopoulos. Loverdos has held a variety of top ministerial posts and is considered the favorite.

Gennimata is the daughter of one of PASOK’s most beloved party founders and also has held Cabinet positions, while Konstantopoulos, although younger and well-liked, is the outsider.
The party election comes next Sunday.

Venizelos is no stranger to controversy and the Greece’s political “hard game”. Considered by far as the best speaker amongst local political leaders and most lawmakers, he nevertheless doesn’t register favorable numbers in terms of “likeability”.

A constitutional expert by training with a vast legislative experience, he led PASOK during a coalition government that the party entered with rival conservative New Democracy from June 2012 until January 2015.

Serving as finance minister during the first memorandum and PSI “haircut”, followed by foreign minister during the second memorandum, PASOK and Venizelos lost significant political capital amongst the voters, with many one-time PASOK supporters shifting their vote to the radical leftist SYRIZA party after 2012.