In a sharp tone, Nikos Androulakis responded to the prime minister, attempting to dismantle one by one the positions that he had conveyed earlier regarding the Constitutional Revision.
“From ‘Mitsotakis or chaos’ you moved to ‘Mitsotakis or Erdogan’. That is, is the popular verdict a game that undermines our national interests? Should we not have elections? The Minister of Justice raised it, you told him bravo and declared him a candidate MP for Thessaloniki A,” he said.
For this phrase of his, Kyriakos Mitsotakis accused him in his rebuttal of involving national issues in the political confrontation and asked him to retract.
For Mr. Androulakis to reply to him: “I mentioned that Mr. Floridis spoke of a ‘raid’ (ed. from Turkey if ND loses the elections) and you are asking me to apologize because I conveyed it. What you are saying is an indirect invitation to Floridis to resign”.
Both Mr. Mitsotakis and Mr. Floridis reacted with laughter to this phrase and there was no new intervention from the government side.
The main points from the speech of the PASOK president:
“Today you took the dilemma to ‘hope or adventure’. What hope are you? For the purchasing power of Greeks to remain last in Europe? Are you hope on rents? On public Health where we have the highest expenditures in Europe?
Are you hope in the institutions, you who came as a rider to heal the wounds of Kammenos-Tsipras, you have done... what have you not done? Are you hope in Justice with the para-state of wiretappings? Hope in corruption?
It is unbelievable that lessons in democratic order are being given by Mr. Voridis who was saved by article 86 (ed. on ministerial responsibility) and I am not referring to the little axes”.
Then, Mr. Androulakis accused the government of investing in fear and not in hope, while in order to prove ND’s pre-election lies, he mentioned: “In 2018 from the podium of the TIF, as leader of the official opposition, you spoke of two VAT rates, at 22% and 11%, while you stated that you would abolish the Katrougalos law. What did you do?”
He added that only these two announcements by Mr. Mitsotakis at the time “cost as much as the entire PASOK program that we presented from the TIF a few days ago”.
The 2019 “trick”
Regarding the revision of the Constitution, the PASOK president explained once again that his party did not contribute to securing the 180 “yes” votes now so that in the next Parliament the ratification of the articles to be revised would not depend on the 151 “yes” votes of the then government majority.
To this end, he invoked the practice of ND, which voted for different things in the Proposing Parliament (under SYRIZA, early 2019) in order for the 180 positive votes to be gathered and brought different amendments in the Revising Parliament (under ND, late 2019).
For specific articles that concerned the revision discussion, he said:
“The prime minister was asking for revision of ‘article 86’ (on ministerial responsibility) under the pressure of the Tempi tragedy and today they ask us why we are not voting for it.
What do you expect from us? To accept revision of article 86 as you propose it, that is, the final decision will be taken by Parliament, so that then Mr. Georgiadis comes and says ‘we are the majority and we vote for whatever we want’?”. He explained that his party is asking for the decision on whether or not to refer a political figure to be taken by an independent judicial body.
Also:
“You propose one term for the President of the Republic and this is being said by the first prime minister in the Metapolitefsi who chose an active MP for the office”.
Mr. Androulakis repeated that there is only one article that PASOK would accept to be voted on now: “article 110” which defines how the Revision of the Constitution is carried out.
That is, to approve that regardless of the number of votes an article gets in the Proposing Parliament, it should again need 180 in the Revising one. So that “the respective government majority cannot change it with the simple majority of 151 votes”.