I'd like to hear the resident experts on Greece thoughts about the Prokopis Pavlopoulos nomination for president. A former Karamanlis minister and 20-year MP seems a bit tainted, if only by association, with the politics Syriza is supposed to be leaving behind.
I assume that with Syriza, ANEL and ND behind him, Pavlopoulos is as good as elected, but feel free to correct me.
Pavlopolous has been elected now with 233 votes
Several reasons Tsipras picked him:
1. At this point there's still an 180 vote threshold required for electing the President, so an opposition party supporting the government's presidential candidate was necessary to let Parliament start doing real stuff instead of spending a week holding more presidential votes
2. This olive branch to ND plays into Tsipras' desire to frame the narrative that SYRIZA is sort of a "Greek national unity government" in opposition to the troika and etc.
3. Pavlopolous was apparently a bit of a maverick within the ND, speaking out against the memorandum
4. The Presidency is ceremonial and the office's actual powers are obligatory actions the Constitution requires the President to take no matter what
The real big thing to notice was that Tsipras had to delay the vote for a full week to get his own party in line behind the candidate. Electing a conservative was hard for SYRIZA's left to swallow.
There's also the fact that back when the Golden Dawn MP punched a KKE politician on a talk show, Pavlopolous was literally sitting between them but didn't do anything to stop the punch and just watched it happen
