Gov’t will not keep its own promises, SYRIZA’s top MP says
The government presented a doctored report of success and of overcoming successive crises in its first term, Sokratis Famellos, head of the main opposition SYRIZA’s parliamentary group, said Saturday.
Famellos was elected to lead the party’s 48-strong delegation pending the election of a leader to replace Alexis Tsipras, who resigned on June 29. SYRIZA won 17.83% of the vote on June 25 compared to 40.56% for conservative New Democracy.
Famellos noted that, while New Democracy may have emerged victorious from the double election, the result and its whole first term, from 2019 to 2023, were not victors for the majority of Greek society. He said the conservative government failed to tackle the Covid-19 pandemic when more than 37,000 people died, while Portugal, with a similar population, had 27,000 victims.
Dealing with the energy crisis was not a success either, Famellos said, given that, in 2022, had the most expensive electricity in the EU; he also blasted the government for Greece having the second highest jobless rate in the EU, at 10.8% in May 2023.
Joblessness soared during the financial crisis of the 2010s, peaking at 27.5% in 2013, under a conservative-socialist government. While the jobeless rate steadily declined under the 2015-19 SYRIZA-led government, it still averaged 17.3% in 2019, the year it left power.
Famellos said his party will vote against the policy statement later Sunday, saying that even all the positive promises made by Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis were hypocritical and would never be fulfilled.
The country is suffering from the cut-price sale of both private and public property and an increasingly authoritarian conservative government, Famellos said. Its political blueprint was the triumph of an unbridled market and profit greed that create poverty and inequalities. Even big enterprises suffer if they are not close to New Democracy MPs and ministers, Famellos claimed.
[Kathimerini/ANA-MPA]
