Talking to the journalist Pavlos Tsimas on SKAI, the President of PASOK-Change Movement, Nikos Androulakis, he commented that the latest developments on the war front in Ukraine and the draft peace agreement put on the table, show that “Europe and the Americans have failed in their choices”.
“The war in Ukraine proved that there is a very large security gapof solidarity and strategy, mainly from Europe, because we are in the European Union and that for me is the priority. That is why I think that our country strategically needs to move along the diplomatic axes of a unified foreign policy, a unified defense policy and the strengthening of the domestic production of armaments programs. In the country, a plan where we will always be consumers of expensive equipment programs, as is the case today, cannot be sustainable in the long term,” he stressed.
He attributed the government’s inability to prepare and implementation of a comprehensive national strategy, giving as an example the back and forth of the Prime Minister in the field of energy.
“Historically, Greece took advantage of international circumstances and choices of the Western axis to gain benefits. This has been done historically, from the Revolution until today. When have we had big hits? When a plan of ours, a national plan, was satisfied by the circumstances, the circumstances, the data of the time and the choices of Western countries. What do I expect from the respective government? Our own plan.
I can’t accept that he says Mr. Mitsotakis a few years ago that hydrocarbons they belong to the past, they are “dead” and suddenly today he comes to make a completely different choice. I cannot accept that the current Minister of Defense – and then Minister of Foreign Affairs – declares that “we will not make the Mediterranean, Gulf of Mexico” but now other choices are being made. This shows a lack of long-term strategy,” he said.
“You will tell me, things change, there must be a measure of adaptation. But you can’t go from one extreme to the other. You can’t say that green energy is a “strategic choice”, to proceed in the wrong way in the green transition, to have very expensive living costs and very expensive production costs due to the wrong choices made by the government in the distribution of the energy space and suddenly to make a leap and go to hydrocarbons, – something that, it should be noted, was started by PASOK but was frozen by both SYRIZA and New Democracy-. These I repeat show a lack of strategy,” he added.
It civilized the absence information of the opposition and demonstrated that it is hypocrisy the invocation of consensus on the part of the government in strategic choices for the future of the country: “Ports are not random infrastructure. It is our national security. Was there such a discussion? I have no update. There is no information either of the political leaders, nor of the competent committee, nor of the ESEP. So, what kind of consent are we talking about? None. We learned everything from the news reports. These are strategic choices concerning the next 50 and 100 years. But the Prime Minister otherwise talks about consensus.”
“Policy is not planned by embassies. Another is diplomacy, another is strategic choices of a national nature, which are chosen by each government and which must be in a very broad, -if you will-, consensus process, because these choices do not concern a four-year period. This is my point of view and I think this is how all politicians and all parties should think,” added Mr. Androulakis.
Highlight the different points of view within the government in matters of foreign policy: “This government is trying to appear that it is the “government of the elite”, that it has a plan. Look at what happened to the SAFE programme, a flagship program that is a harbinger of what we envision for European Defence, – it’s not the last episode, it’s the first small chapter.
Mr. Dendias said other things, Mr. Gerapetritis said something else and Mr. Mitsotakis said something else. Here there is a serious deficit of consensus even within the government itself on top issues. They need to get serious, Greece needs a serious government with a credible plan for all these geopolitical challenges.”
Mr. Androulakis noted that Greece must become an energy hub and regarding the electrical interconnection between Greece and Cyprus, he remarked: “With the latest events, we stopped discussing the Israel-Cyprus-Crete cable. He disappeared from the public debate. A serious failure of Greek foreign policy, when Erdogan’s scumbag passes.”
In the wake of the representative’s provocative statements of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the President of PASOK reminded that it is not the first time: “Hagia Sophia became a mosque and in fact they were celebrating because Russian tourists will not have a ticket to visit it. And when he was ticketed a year after Erdogan, they didn’t say a word. So, we don’t have one and two statements, we have many statements.
Turkey, which is arming Ukraine, – Greece has not given anything compared to what Turkey has given to Ukraine – why has it not received similar pressures? Now let’s go to the European factor: Although Turkey maintains a strategic relationship with the Russians and in a large part of its policy has turned its back on Russia, is it treated similarly by Europe? No.
So for us what is our issue? That while the Europeans on the subject of Eastern Europe they showed a high sensitivity for issues of airspace violations, in ours they did not show the corresponding sensitivity. So here is the deficit of our own policy. In other words, for a few violations, the issue of the dome in Eastern Europe was opened, and for hundreds of violations, -thousands of violations- that have been systematically committed in the Greek airspace, a similar conversation was never opened.”
Regarding the government’s attempt to get over the corruption scandal in OPEKEPE, he noted:
“We cannot say that “OPEKEPE is not a scandal of New Democracy but also of other parties”, when PASOK has been in power for 15 years. When in the file there are only officers of the New Democracy and when the Prime Minister did not let the justice investigate Messrs. Voridis and Avgenakis. I heard the argument the day before yesterday: “since you say that the technical solution was legal, why are you asking for the investigation of Voridis who implemented it?”.
But, he doesn’t control him the European Public Prosecutor’s Office because it applied the law, but because he transgressed the law. He had to see in the papers that OPEKEPE gave him that he had an excess of millions and say: “what is going on here? What party is this?”. He didn’t. That’s why we want it checked.” He described the government’s communication distractions tarnishing honest people such as Deputy Governor St. Tzedakis, whom they dragged out all summer as “the green Frapes”, without having a single charge against him for the OPEKEPE scandal.
“They brought the fake “Frape” in the attempt to offset, but the normal one with the millions, the best man of Mr. Mitsotakis, -Mr. Mitsotakis’ father has baptized his brother-, the party executive of the New Democracy and party leader of the Prime Minister does not come to the Inquiry. Although the Prime Minister himself ten days ago, he was trumpeting that everyone would come and Mr. Frapes first. And he didn’t come.
The opposition he asked to be extradited and the government said no. He didn’t want the New Democracy to go through the pain of the questions, because the Prime Minister himself would have a lot of political damage. So they chose to hide him from the public eye and the questions of the parliamentarians.” The President of PASOK listed a number of cases of falsification of true facts to serve the government’s narrative with ephemeral impressions.
“They say about the “Butcher”, Mr. Stratakis, that he was in PASOK under Andreas Papandreou, but they don’t say that he was a New Democracy MP candidate in 2019″ he countered and also highlighted the war he received from journalists and government ministers for his aversion to the fact that in Vorizia we had the activity of criminal organizations, a statement that the Minister of Citizen Protection repeated.
“PASOK accepts a systematic war and I personally, but I am happy, because with this war if PASOK succeeds in achieving its goal, it will be a great victory for the people themselves. It will be a government without dependence on interests and entanglement” he pointed out. Finally, referring to accuracy, he reiterated that PASOK has submitted a complete program for there to be rules in the market.
“The program of accuracy is one: Prices skyrocketed because there weren’t many checks and large fines. So if you ask the government officials, ‘how many audits did you do, what fines did you impose and what did you collect in relation to the billions that the oligopolies made’, you will understand why we have such precision”, he noted. “The government objects that it nominally increased salaries. Yes, but when purchasing power has collapsed and is second only to the end of the European Union, you’ve made a hole in the water. Because you increase incomes a little, but prices, rents, private health services, health insurance premiums rose much more as a result of which the disposable income decreases” he concluded.