Anna Karamanou responds to KINAL regarding her referral for expulsion: “Are you referring me only with false and fabricated charges?”

“The claims about my collaboration and alliance with ND are, at the very least, absurd and imaginative fabrications.”

The Ethics, Statutes, and Certification Committee (EDEKAP) of the Movement for Change party is referring the current Secretary of the Equality Sector and former MEP Anna Karamanou to the party’s Central Committee to decide on disciplinary measures against her.

In a statement, Dr. Anna Karamanou, former MEP, raises questions about the reasons for her referral to KINAL’s Disciplinary Committee, with the prospect of expulsion from the party.

She states:

The claims about my collaboration and alliance with ND are, at the very least, absurd and imaginative fabrications by a party mechanism that doesn’t even know what association it is dealing with.

She speaks of the Women’s Committee of the Parliament and of women who served as MPs and MEPs, likely referring to the September 26, 2018, elections of the cross-party Women’s Political Association, in which former PASOK MP and Prefect of Heraklion, Crete, Evangelia Schoinaraki, won the most votes—not Effie Bekou, who was proposed by Mr. Kegeroglou and Christodoulakis.

Personally, I supported both candidates equally, exactly as decided by KINAL’s Equality Network in its meeting on 20.09.2018. I made absolutely no distinction between the two. There is no evidence to the contrary, nor could there be, for that matter.

In the election of the presidium by the 12-member Board of Directors of the Women’s Political Association, women from ND, SYRIZA, ANEL, the Centrist Union, and three members from KINAL participated. Schoinaraki and Bekou both ran for the presidency.

Schoinaraki won with a 7-5 majority. Fotini Vryna from ND became the General Secretary, and Ioanna Kanavou from SYRIZA was elected First Vice President. The distribution of positions was agreed upon by all parties participating in the Women’s Political Association, as is typically the case in similar associations.

Was it possible for KINAL’s position to prevail in the multi-party Association?

Personally, although I am a founding member of the Women’s Political Association, I did not run in the last elections because I support renewal, and I do not participate in the Board of Directors of the Women’s Political Association.

I am therefore unfairly accused of not following the party line, which was to elect Mrs. Bekou as president of the Women’s Political Association! For this reason, I was replaced in the Secretariat of the Equality Network of KINAL and referred to the disciplinary committee, presumably with the question of expulsion, for collaborating and forming an alliance with ND!!! All this without any investigation into the truth! Only with false and fabricated accusations!

It would be more honorable and sincere to refer me for my public stance in favor of the Prespa Agreement.