Dimitris Kammenos asked to quit hours after being appointed deputy transport minister over claims he made offensive remarks on social media

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

The resignation of a Greek junior minister hours after his appointment has exposed the prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, to fierce criticism and highlighted the challenge he faces to keep a fractious coalition together.



With the ink barely dry on Wednesday’s cabinet appointments by the newly re-elected prime minister, the deputy infrastructure and transport minister, Dimitris Kammenos, was asked to resign in a furore over offensive postings he was alleged to have made on Twitter.

Kammenos, an MP with the rightwing Independent Greeks party, has denied allegations of antisemitism and homophobia, saying his social media accounts had been tampered with and most of the alleged postings falsified.

Tsipras needs the Independent Greeks’ 10 MPs to give the government a slim majority of 155 seats out of 300.

Tsipras, who appointed Kammenos on the recommendation of his coalition partner, appeared oblivious to the minister’s reputation for controversial comments – the legislator was lambasted by Jewish organisations in the summer for likening Greece’s economic predicament to Auschwitz.

“Everyone on Twitter knew about Kammenos except Tspiras,” the centre-right Eleftheros Typos newspaper reported on its front page on Thursday.

Tsipras eventually told his coalition partner that Kammenos should explain himself after news of a social media storm reached him in Brussels, where he was representing Greece at a summit on the migrant crisis.

“It shows inattention to detail, insensitivity, especially if they knew about it. And it shows that to err is human, but to err twice is stupid,” said Theodore Couloumbis, a political analyst.



