Tensions between Constantopoulou and Panousis rise
A simmering dispute between Parliament Speaker Zoe Constantopoulou and Alternate Citizens’ Protection Minister Yiannis Panousis seemed to intensify on Thursday as the latter made a clear dig at the House speaker over her recent crackdown on police officers and their access to Parliament.
“Whoever believes that in a parliamentary democracy you can degrade the role of the police and reduce the standing of individual police officers is offering bad services to the country,” Panousis told Parliament. He was clearly referring to a recent decision by Constantopoulou to bar police officers from accessing restrooms in the House without first undergoing security checks, an intervention that prompted an angry response from unionists. In another dig, he suggested that psychometric tests, which he had once suggested police officers should undergo, should become mandatory for politicians.
Constantopoulou on Thursday presided over a new session of Parliament’s so-called Debt Truth Committee, during which the panel examined an International Monetary Fund document which is said to prove that the Fund knew, from March 2010, that the economic program decided upon for Greece would lead to an increase in the country’s public debt. Panayiotis Roumeliotis, a former Greece representative to the IMF, is said to have provided the document. He is to face the committee on Monday.
