Greece
In Greece, party discipline is normally very strict. However, a few governments have collapsed despite this strictness. The role of the whip is usually exercised by the party leader but Kostas Karamanlis, the Prime Minister from 2004 to 2009 and former leader of the New Democracy party, mostly used Giannis Tragakis, General Secretary of his party parliamentary group, as a whip. Until November 2008, New Democracy, Karamanlis' party, had 152 MPs out of 300. When Petros Tatoulis, MP for Arcadia Prefecture, stated that Karamanlis was guilty of a few political scandals, Karamanlis immediately expelled him from both the parliamentary group and the party, as a result giving New Democracy a majority of only one seat.
Read more about this topic: Whip (politics)
Famous quotes containing the word greece:
“The science, the art, the jurisprudence, the chief political and social theories, of the modern world have grown out of Greece and Rome—not by favor of, but in the teeth of, the fundamental teachings of early Christianity, to which science, art, and any serious occupation with the things of this world were alike despicable.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“When a man hath no freedom to fight for at home,
Let him combat for that of his neighbors;
Let him think of the glories of Greece and of Rome,
And get knocked on the head for his labors.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)