The contest between Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and main opposition leader Alexis Tsipras is useless and will not allow Greece to move on, PASOK-Movement for Change (KINAL) leader Nikos Androulakis said in Sunday’s Kathimerini.
In an interview to the newspaper, Androulakis said each of the two leaders had at least four years within which to show their intentions and the results of their policies. “The only thing keeping them standing is comparison and offsetting between them, and I think that is useless and catastrophic. That is why Greece cannot turn the page as long as they are at the forefront,” the socialist party leader said.
Both ruling New Democracy and main opposition SYRIZA-Progressive Alliance “are fighting to see who will control the branches of power, manipulate justice, do the greatest amount of phone surveillance, hire the most appointees, and do the most direct contract assignments,” he added.
Mitsotakis is trying to show he represents stability, and Tsipras progress. “PASOK-KINAL does not want to stand in the middle or be neutral, but is facing both and walking along its own side of the river,” Androulakis said.
Coalition conditions
Asked to reveal the conditions for participating in a coalition government following national elections (whose date is not yet announced), Androulakis said his party sought “a strong voting percentage so that we may be able to impose our policy priorities as a field of convergence, as happens in countries with a strong liberal democracy. Otherwise, the purpose is not to rule for the sake of ruling. In the phase Greece is in now, coalition governments can funciton as a bulwark against arrogance and regimentation.” But such governments must have clear policy commitments and individuals who can express the greater political change that Greece needs, he added.
As for having been under phone surveillance by the government, Androulakis asserted nobody had tried to blackmail him, nor would he or the party have allowed such a thing. “I assume however as we all realize that I was not being spied on out of simple curiosity,” he said, charging Mitsotakis with avoiding assuming all his responsibilities.
At the same time he also criticized Syriza for resorting to working with populists whose practices “do no reflect a progressive world.”
In the interview, the Pasok-Kinal leader also set the priorities of the party in terms of policy, and explains what the party will do to protect defaulted borrowers from losing their primary home.
SOURCE; ANA-MPA
