PASOK’s Androulakis tables motion of no confidence in gov’t
Socialist PASOK leader Nikos Androulakis has submitted a no-confidence vote in the government, saying that it tried to cover up its responsibility over a deadly rail disaster last year.
In tabling the motion, Androulakis accused the government of “systematically undermining the rule of law” following a newspaper report suggesting that audio leaked to the news media of rail officials had been chosen selectively to misleadingly indicate human error in the crash.
The motion was signed by 83 MPs from PASOK, left-wing SYRIZA and New Left parties as well as Course of Freedom.
Parliamentary Speaker Konstantinos Tasoulas said the three-day debate on the motion of no confidence will begin at 7 p.m.
The vote on the motion of no confidence is customarily held immediately after the debate ends, but it can be postponed for 48 hours at the government’s request.
Even if all the opposition parties join forces, the government, which holds a comfortable majority of 158 MPs in the 300-seat Parliament, is expected to survive the motion.
The crash in the Tempi area of central Greece occurred on the night of February 28, 2023, when a passenger train smashed into an oncoming cargo train put onto the same track and heading in opposite directions. It was Greece’s deadliest railway disaster. Many of the 57 people killed were university students heading back to class after a public holiday.
Renewed public attention on the disaster has dented Mitsotakis’ majority in recent opinion polls, a little over 10 weeks before the European Parliament election in June. The crash highlighted long-standing problems with Greece’s rail safety monitoring systems, and relatives of the crash victims have been vocal in alleging a cover-up by the government of failures to implement safeguards that could have prevented the tragedy.
Androulakis submitted the no-confidence motion on Tuesday following a Sunday newspaper publication that alleged that transcripts of conversations between the station manager and the train driver leaked to the media in the immediate aftermath of the crash had been heavily edited.
“In every scandal, in every government failure, you make the political choice to hide the truth, instead of taking the difficult road of responsibility,” Androulakis said in parliament as he submitted the motion.
To Vima newspaper said that the leaked audio of the stationmaster’s conversation with the train driver also contained unrelated conversations, which rendered it misleading. [Kathimerini/AP]
Government officials Tuesday denied claims that they were behind the leaks and described the parliamentary motion as a political stunt.
