Thessaloniki city councillor quits, taking dig at mayor

Nikos Tahiaos, a city councillor for the municipality of Thessaloniki, announced on Tuesday that he had submitted his resignation, accusing municipal authorities of pursuing personal goals and "political patronage."

"The fight for an open city, with a cosmopolitan aura, without taboos, hospitable to modern currents…is not judged only within the context of a municipal authority," he said in a post on his personal Facebook page.

He said that the choices made by the current municipality "are dictated solely by personal goals and political patronage," while he described the
municipal council as a "catwalk" of mayoral candidates, where "personal recriminations" abound, in what appeared to be an indirect dig at current Thessaloniki Mayor Konstantinos Zervas.

Tahiaos was a mayoral candidate in Thessaloniki in the local elections of 2019 but lost to Zervas.