The deposed leader of the Greek opposition party Syriza, Stefanos Kaselakis, has announced that he is leaving that party to form his own.

Kaselakis, a businessman who mainly lived in the United States and entered politics only last year, left Syriza after the party's Congress refused to consider his candidacy for leader, writes Euronews. 

He said on Friday he was leaving Syriza after a two-day party congress rejected a request to consider his candidacy for leader in internal party elections due later this month.

Kaselakis, 36, entered Greek politics in May 2023 as a candidate in elections in which Syriza suffered a crushing defeat and which the conservative New Democracy won.

He replaced the party's longtime leader Alexis Tsipras, who resigned after the election failure.

Many Syriza members who supported Kaselakis soon began to accuse him of not being a true leftist.

One prominent Syriza member even compared Kaselakis to US President-elect Donald Trump.

The Syriza Central Committee removed Kaselakis from his position in September after a vote of no confidence.

He challenged the legitimacy of the vote and was to run for leader, but his candidacy was rejected by the party's Central Committee.

Together with Kaselakis, four deputies left the party on Friday and Saturday.

After this development, Syriza now has 31 MPs in the Greek Parliament out of a total of 300 MPs.

Syriza was the ruling party in Greece from 2015 to 2019, and recent polls show that support for the party has fallen below ten percent.