Greece
In Greece, party discipline is normally very strict. However, a few governments have collapsed despite this strictness. The role of the whip is usually exercised by the party leader but Kostas Karamanlis, the Prime Minister from 2004 to 2009 and former leader of the New Democracy party, mostly used Giannis Tragakis, General Secretary of his party parliamentary group, as a whip. Until November 2008, New Democracy, Karamanlis' party, had 152 MPs out of 300. When Petros Tatoulis, MP for Arcadia Prefecture, stated that Karamanlis was guilty of a few political scandals, Karamanlis immediately expelled him from both the parliamentary group and the party, as a result giving New Democracy a majority of only one seat.
Read more about this topic: Whip (politics)
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