Androulakis to gov’t: You are bogus modernizers
“We will not give a vote of confidence to the government…we will be the reliable opposition the people need,” socialist leader Nikos Androulakis said Saturday during the debate on the government’s policy statement.
Androulakis’ PASOK party came third in the June 25 election, with 11.84% of the vote, electing 32 MPs in the 300-member Greek Parliament.
Androulakis said that Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis was merely abusing words when he was referring to modernizing the state, adding that the prime minister’s vision was a deeply old-time one. The government cannot call itself a modernizing agent when the country has the fourth highest taxes in the European Union as a percentage of GDP, while having the third lowest purchasing power parity.
Androulakis also accused Mitsotakis of taking advantage of the information the National Intelligence Agency gathered from illegal wiretapping while invoking a bogus claim of secrecy to cover the scandal; Androulakis’ phone was one of those found tapped by the Agency, a procedure Mitsotakis himself called flawed but legal.
The government promises growth, higher wages and prosperity but actually creates temporary, precarious, badly paid jobs. It has also failed to deal adequately with a housing crisis, Androulakis said.
The socialist leader also said that private debt was undermining the economy and said it was politicians’ duty to give a second chance to those in danger of having their houses repossessed and auctioned off by debt-recovering funds.
Androulakis said his party’s priority is to improve public higher education but did not state clearly if he would support revising the Constitution to lift the ban on private universities. He did accuse the main opposition SYRIZA, which opposes such a revision, of hypocrisy.
The debate is to end with a vote of confidence, widely expected to be won by the government, later Saturday.
