Speaking at a press conference in the framework of the 2015 Thessaloniki EXPO, leader of Popular Unity part, Panagiotis Lafazanis said the his former party SYRIZA had been forced to a ‘humiliating resignation’. The press conference of the leftist party, which broke away from SYRIZA, started with a message by iconic left MP Manolis Glezos, who called on the Greek people to ‘take their fortunes in their own hands’. Lafazanis, in the presence of former president of the Greek parliament Zoe Konstantopoulou who was sitting by his side, said that Greece could no longer stand any more memoranda that were transforming the country into a ‘colony and protectorate’. He underlined that a return to a national currency was not a catastrophe. “The national currency has the prospect of increasing our exports, to provide liquidity to the economy and lead us to substantive reconstruction of production”, he said. Lafazanis claimed that countries outside the Eurozone, like Sweden, Denmark or Poland were not facing any calamity, adding that the alternative of a national currency should have been on the negotiating table from the outset. On the matter of his party’s goals in the September 20 elections, Lazazanis said his objective was to form a large patriotic, anti-memorandum front, claiming the poll findings would be proven wrong.

Zoe Konstantopoulou

Former president of the Greek parliament Zoe Kosnatntopoulou on her part said that Popular Unity represented the hope ‘that some had attempted to burn’. ‘Hope will rekindle soon”, said Konstantopoulou, adding that the party and those aligning with it are a bother ‘because we have proven that a one-way path is not submission’.