SYRIZA MP slams Polakis for comments over ND MEP candidate
Alternate Health Minister Pavlos Polakis' aspersions against an opposition candidate in the upcoming European elections do not represent ruling “SYRIZA's ethos,” an influential lawmaker with the leftist party said on Tuesday.
Polakis has “done himself an injustice,” MP Nikos Filis said in Parliament in the wake of the public and political uproar sparked by Polakis' suggestions on social media that New Democracy's MEP candidate Stelios Kymbouropoulos used his disability to get a job in the public sector.
“I believe that Mr. Polakis has done himself and injustice with what he said and done an injustice to his work in the government, which has been significant in the area of health,” Filis said.
“With what he said, of course, he does not represent the democratic ethos or SYRIZA's ethos,” the former education minister added.
His statement came after New Democracy leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis said that the opposition party would be filing a censure motion against Polakis after the Easter break over his “unacceptable insinuations about a man whose personal journey should serve as an example to all of us.”
Kymbouropoulos, a psychiatrist at Attica General Hospital, has been confined to a wheelchair since being diagnosed with spinal muscular atrophy as a child.
