Politicians clash over book delay
The government and the main opposition PASOK party yesterday accused each other of political expediency over the delayed distribution of a controversial primary school history book. Education Minister Marietta Giannakou responded scathingly to suggestions by PASOK officials that delays in distributing the controversial book, which critics say offers an inaccurate view of Greek history, had been intentional. «I challenge them to remember the books they had in schools in the 1980s, which describe how well Greeks lived under the Ottomans,» she said. «They should decide whether school books should be written and corrected by experts or written by party representatives,» she added. She stressed that the delays were exclusively due to overburdened printing presses churning out campaign leaflets for elections and accused PASOK of «raw political expediency» for suggesting they were intentional. PASOK spokesman Yiannis Ragoussis was just as caustic. «In the Middle Ages, they burnt books, now we have the modern method of just not printing them if they are likely to offend,» he said.
