PASOK tries new tack, ND holds firm
The bickering between New Democracy and PASOK continued apace yesterday despite the government’s assertion that the Socialists had committed a major «political gaffe» by accusing the conservatives of tampering with ballot papers during a parliamentary vote. Following PASOK’s claims of vote tampering on Monday, the main opposition party appeared undeterred in its effort to dig up some dirt on the government as it turned its attention to Merchant Marine Minister Giorgos Voulgarakis, claiming he had breached parliamentary rules by being involved in a real estate company. The government sought to take care of the first of the two fronts opened by PASOK by pouring scorn on claims that a vote that took place in May had been rigged. Government spokesman Theodoros Roussopoulos said that this was PASOK’s «biggest political gaffe» since George Papandreou had taken over the party’s presidency. The Socialists presented video footage on Monday which they claim showed that Yiannis Bougias and Constantinos Agorastos, the two New Democracy MPs that had the task of collecting the ballot papers during a vote on the constitutional review, vetted the votes to check that they were in line with the party’s position and replaced several that were not. The theory was rejected by Parliament Speaker Dimitris Sioufas, a former ND minister, but PASOK pressed him to investigate the claims. «We would expect the parliament speaker to conduct even the most perfunctory internal review before rushing to cover for the government and to present it as being spotless,» said PASOK spokesman Giorgos Papaconstantinou. While an impasse developed over the alleged vote doctoring, a group of PASOK MPs submitted a question to Parliament yesterday in which they claimed that Voulgarakis had breached parliamentary rules and had behaved unethically by being involved in a real estate company that he set up with his wife in 2005, which in 2007 was transferred to an off-shore company. Voulgarakis said that constitution does not prevent him from owning a company, adding that he had no involvement in the running of the company. He said the company only bought one property before being sold to a Cypriot real estate firm. «PASOK MPs who are going down the same, slippery road of self-ridicule, have returned with another non-issue,» said the minister. Roussopoulos pointed out that Voulgarakis had the government’s full backing.
