Greek resistance hero to step down from European Parliament
Manolis Glezos - Photo © European Union 2015 - EP
(ATHENS) - Greek wartime resistance hero Manolis Glezos on Wednesday said he was stepping down as a member of the European Parliament for the ruling radical Syriza party after a year in the post.
"As promised following my election, I will resign at the end of the first year of my mandate," the 92-year-old former journalist who was elected in May 2014 said.
According to Greek news reports, Glezos on July 8 will be replaced by fellow Syriza member Yiannis Milios, a eurosceptic Marxist economist on the party's hard left.
Glezos is best remembered for an audacious act as a teenager alongside his friend Apostolos Santas when he climbed on top of the Acropolis in May 1941 and removed the Nazi swastika flag flying over occupied Athens.
But as a European parliamentarian, trips to Strasbourg and back were already complicated for Glezos owing to lung damage caused by Nazi torturers that left him unable to fly.
Glezos has been at the forefront of radical politics throughout his life.
He is one of the leading voices calling for the return of loans forced on Greece by Nazi Germany during the war -- an issue which Berlin says was addressed in postwar settlements.
When the financial crisis struck Greece in 2010, he joined anti-austerity protesters outside the Greek parliament and was tear-gassed by riot police.
Earlier this year, he took aim at his own party for watering down its anti-austerity agenda to clinch a loan deal with the country's EU-IMF creditors.
"There can be no compromise... between a slave and a conqueror, the only solution is freedom," he wrote in a blog entry in February, after the government agreed to hold talks with the creditors on alternative reforms.
"I wish to apologise to the Greek people for taking part in this illusion," Glezos said.
A few days later, he insisted that his statement did not mean to criticise the government.
"Those who say I stand against the government should swallow their tongue," he said.
The reform talks are still going on, and Greece could be forced to default on its debts unless an agreement is reached by June 30.