(ANSA-AFP) - ATHENS, JAN 4 - Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos
Mitsotakis sparked early election rumours Monday by holding his
second cabinet reshuffle in five months, promoting several
hardliners and appointing Greece's first openly gay junior
minister. Among the changes, Mitsotakis appointed a new
government spokesman and a new interior minister -- the main
person responsible for planning elections, which are normally
due in 2023. "The cabinet presented today has an electoral
outlook," said Avgi, the daily of the main opposition leftist
Syriza party. The new interior minister is Makis Voridis,
formerly agriculture minister and founder in the 1990s of a
now-defunct ultra-nationalist party affiliated with the
far-right National Front in France. In 2019 Voridis denied that
he had anti-Semitic beliefs after a prominent Greek Jewish
official said he had a "dark past". Another conservative
hardliner is Sofia Voultepsi, the new deputy migration minister,
who in 2014 called asylum seekers "unarmed invaders" in a
parliament speech. The cabinet also includes Greece's first
openly gay cabinet member, 44-year-old deputy culture minister
Nicholas Yatromanolakis. Mitsotakis has a high personal approval
rate in polls, and his conservative New Democracy party leads
Syriza by some 15 points. (ANSA-AFP).
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