Tsipras’ motion to censure the Mitsotakis administration rejected

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis (R) receives applause from the ministers and deputies after his speech, during a debate on a motion of censure against the government by SYRIZA at the Greek Parliament, Greece, 30 January 2022. Photo: AAP via EPA/ALEXANDROS VLACHOS

31 January 2022 2:16pm

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The censure motion tabled by main opposition SYRIZA-Progressive Alliance was a “desperate attempt” by the main opposition leader to “staunch wounds within his own party,” Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said in Parliament on Sunday, prior to the vote which did not meet the majority.

After the end of the roll call vote 156 MPs voted against, 142 for and one present. It is noted that 299 of the 300 MPs were present as New Democracy’s MP Marietta Giannakou is in Airforce General Hospital’s ICU after a fall.

Three days of discussion had proved “how justified were the waves of outrage and anger that swept through Greek society,” main opposition SYRIZA-Progressive Alliance leader Alexis Tsipras said in Parliament on Sunday evening, accusing the government of failing “with a huge social, economic and human cost,” during the plenary debate on a censure motion tabled by his party according to ANA-MPA.

Addressing Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, Tsipras accused him of acting “as though you believe your own propaganda,” while adding that the citizens were now “immune to it”. He accused the prime minister of “living in glass bubble” protected by “flatterers”.

“It is time someone told you what is really happening in Greek society. Mr. Mitsotakis, you are finished politically but the worst thing is that you are living in your own parallel universe where everything is going well, because it is presented as going well by the mainstream media,” Tsipras said.

“You are finished, not only because you failed with huge human, economic and social cost in nearly all the crucial issues you handled. In the pandemic, the fires, high prices, the recent snow…but chiefly because at a time when you are failing resoundingly in everything…you continue in a provocative way to believe that you are not a prime minister who must be held accountable but a prince for whom power is a hereditary right.”

“You have announced, Mr. Tsipras, that I am finished politically. I imagine this forecast is as accurate as when you said that there was not a chance in a million that Mitsotakis will win the elections,” the prime minister said.

He accused Tsipras of “doing what he knows how to do well, distorting the truth,” while adding that the main opposition leader had outdone himself during his speech in parliament, “[with] two lies in every sentence.”

Responding to the main opposition’s call for early elections, Mitsotakis said that SYRIZA had not yet examined any of the mistakes of its government nor changed any members of the leadership team that the Greek people had rejected at the last elections.

The New Democracy government, he added, was facing the challenges of tomorrow and crises without recent historic precedent, such as the global pandemic, the secondary energy crisis, extreme weather phenomena, earthquakes, heat waves and the “hybrid attack on our country in Evros and the events in the Eastern Mediterranean.”

“We can say that we managed to get through these storms with the least casualties,” the prime minister said.
“We make the lessons priorities and we serve them…not on the basis of the cries of a party that has nothing to say about the responsibility of a private company,” he added.