Lawyers lash back at claims of election tampering plot
The coordinating committee of Greece's bar associations on Friday lashed out at suggestions that the results of the elections for European Parliament and local government later this month may be tampered with, saying that a fair count is “guaranteed by the representatives of the judicial authority.”
The committee issued an announcement in response to comments made on Thursday by the secretary of opposition New Democracy, Lefteris Avgenakis, in which he suggested that there are “widespread rumors that certain parties intend to tamper with the electoral results.”
“We do not believe that there will be a concerted effort by SYRIZA… but people in that [political] sphere,” Avgenakis had said, referring to the ruling leftist party.
Avgenakis' comments “expose lawyers, judges, notaries and other representatives in the public mind as being party to or tolerant of such illegal and anti-democratic activities,” the country's bar associations said.
The conservative party's secretary has also come under fire from the government, with Interior Minister Alexis Harisis saying that he “sincerely hopes this grave institutional blunder does not express the party as a whole and its president.”
He went on to call on New Democracy chief Kyriakos Mitsotakis to “respond to the unacceptable comments of his party's secretary.”
