With a letter to the chairman of the Greek parliament Dimitris Sioufas, prime-minister Kostas Karamanlis requested the removal of the "rebellious" Petros Tatoulis from the New Democracy party. This way, the governing party was left with 151 members in the 300 member Greek parliament. Petros Tatoulis is a former vice-minister of Culture, who was dismissed due to incompetence in Kostas Karamanlis’ first parliament. Since then, Tatoulis has become the awaken conscience or the rebellious child of New Democracy.

            Repeatedly Tatoulis has criticized the actions and decisions of Kostas Karamanlis. Also, he is the one behind the attacks against two of the closest co-workers of the Greek prime-minister – Giorgos Voulgarakis and Theodoros Roussopoulos. Subsequently, both of them were forced to resign. Petros Tatoulis has demonstrated, more than once his friendly relationship with the leader of the nationalistic group LOAS, Giorgos Karatzaferis. The icing on the cake for Karamanlis was Tatoulis’ newspaper interview yesterday, in which he dared to personally criticize the Greek prime-minister.

            “I regret that the dismissal of Tatoulis happened at a time when the entire efforts of the government are targeted towards overcoming the economic crisis,” commented Lefteris Zagoritis, the chief secretary of New Democracy.