Former prime minister Costas Simitis should not have released his memoirs so soon, says Gerasimos Arsenis, one of the ministers who served under him and who accused the ex-PASOK leader of exercising a policy of “benign neglect” in the face of corruption.

Arsenis told Sunday’s Kathimerini that Simitis should have let more time pass between his departure as premier and PASOK president last year and the publication of his book last week about his eight years as prime minister.

The book has provoked members of Simitis’s own party as well as opposition politicians to admonish the former PM for not being critical enough of his premiership.

Arsenis was one Simitis’s rivals for the leadership of PASOK in 1996 but went on to serve as education minister from then until 2000. The former minister accused Simitis of not doing enough to combat corruption. “If we had dared to create a wider democratic front against corruption and vested interests, would have probably managed the biggest reform of the modern era,” he said.