No confidence motion fails, 141-159
The no-confidence motion tabled against the government by several opposition parties failed Thursday night, with 141 MPs voting for and 159 against.
The 158 MPs of the ruling New Democracy party were joined by an independent MP, who has bolted from the far-right Spartiates (Spartans), to reject the motion.
The result had been expected. A defection by New Democracy MPs that would bring down the government would have been a surprise of immense proportions.
The vote was preceded by speeches by Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and opposition party leaders in a highly charged atmosphere, not only because they focused on the fatal train crash at Tempe last year, but also because it was preceded by the surprise news of the resignation of two government ministers, which reinforced the opposition attacks within Parliament.
Mitsotakis hit back at the opposition, calling their motion “unacceptable” and “inappropriate,” and denouncing their “brutal attempt” to take advantage of the widespread grief for the February 28, 2023, Tempe rail disaster that he said went far beyond the families of the 57 dead and the hundreds of injured train passengers. “They tried to turn grief into a party banner,” Mitsotakis said of the opposition.
For the accident itself, which opposition speakers insisted on calling a “crime,” Mitsotakis said it was the moment where the state’s long-standing structural deficiencies met human error. Despite their concerted attacks on the government, opposition parties could not conceal the conflicting tendencies. The statements that preceded the charged speeches by the political leaders are indicative of the climate that has developed. The extreme-left wing of SYRIZA, as expressed by Nikos Pappas, reiterated the rhetoric about the danger of electoral fraud, making reference to a dark past of the ruling conservatives.
“We are returning to the gloomy days of your political ancestors of the ERE [a Greek political party formed in 1956 by Konstantinos Karamanlis] and the 1961 elections [marred by fraud],” he said.
Evangelia Liakouli on the part of socialist PASOK said her party is the “institutional guarantor against the institutional aberration” of New Democracy. Euclid Tsakalotos of SYRIZA splinter party New Left said the conditions are not ripe for an alternative leftist proposal of governance, while a few hours later Effie Achtsioglou launched her own motion of censure against the new SYRIZA leadership: “Greek society does not deserve this opposition,” she said. At the same time the “civil war” continued to rage on the right side of the political spectrum, with nationalist Greek Solution accusing the Niki party and its leader of fantasizing about spearheading the patriotic front.
