Venizelos: I do not believe that Golden Dawn MPs will dare to resign

"I don’t believe that the MPs of the Golden Dawn will dare to resign," Foreign Minister Evangelos Venizelos said, commenting on the threats by the fascist party’s MPs.

"The Constitution gives a solution in a scenario of mass resignations," Venizelos said and referred to Articles, 51 paragraph 1 and 53 paragraph 2 (the related articles can be read at the end of the text*).

"Democracy cannot finance its rivals," the Deputy Prime Minister said and announced the suspension of funding for the Golden Dawn and the interruption of compensation to its five arrested MPs. "Until there are conclusive court decisions there will be a statutory solution for suspension of payments."

The Foreign Minister said he feels vindicated, because as he said, "I was the first who raised the issue of the Golden Dawn requesting the activation of the constitutional arc."

He added that "it is a great mistake to believe that anyone slipping into Nazi behavior, into acts of violence, does so only as a result of the economic crisis."

Referring to the possibility of early elections due to massive resignations of the GD MPs, Venizelos called these scenarios as "politically insubstantial and economically dangerous."

*Article 51, paragraph 1

The number of MPS is specified by law, but may not be of less than two hundred nor bigger than three hundred.

Article 53, paragraph 2

A parliamentary seat, which has become vacant during the last year of a period, is not filled by elections, when required so by Law, if the empty seats are no more than one fifth of the whole number of MPs.