House committee probing Novartis to postpone Tuesday meeting, says speaker
Parliament Speaker Konstantinos Tasoulas announced on Friday that a House committee probing alleged meddling by former alternate justice minister Dimitris Papangelopoulos in the Novartis investigation will not meet next Tuesday, as it was planned, to allow time for main opposition leader Alexis Tsipras to select the replacements for the two party MPs who were ejected this week.
The panel will instead meet on Thursday. Asked by journalists how he would react to a possible refusal by Tsipras to select replacements, Tasoulas said: “I will consider it as stubbornness.”
Earlier this week, MPs Pavlos Polakis and Dimitris Tzanakopoulos, both former ministers, were ejected from the panel, due to their status as witnesses in the investigation, which was deemed to be a potential conflict of interests.
Tsipras described the exemption of the two MPs as “illegal” and a “brute deprivation of their parliamentary rights.”
