Prime Minister and New Democracy party leader Costas Karamanlis addressed an election campaign rally in Kozani, western Macedonia, on Friday evening calling on voters to “question all those who doubt your intelligence, reject all those that are negating the truth” and added that the main opposition PASOK party “conceals its real intentions and fears that it might displease the citizens.”
The ruling ND party, he said, “tells the truth to the people and has a plan with which it can lead the country to a better tomorrow.”
The prime minister strongly criticised PASOK leader George Papandreou on the latter’s position on national issues saying that, as foreign minister in the years 1999-2004, he (Papandreou) had declared that in exploratory talks with neighbouring Turkey the issue of grey zones would not be discussed while the then prime minister said that the issue was finally included in these talks.
“I question nobody’s patriotism but they cannot question our’s,” the prime minister noted.
On the ‘naming issue’ of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia’s (FYROM) Karamanlis said “we put clear red lines and we do not backtrack. We proved that in Bucharest, we showed boldness and credibility which cannot be questioned by anybody.”