The three major government-opposition battles until the end of the year

By Penelope Galliou

Even though the polls are months away, it is now a fact that the country has plunged into the depths of a long pre-election period, the future of which is predicted to be murky and sharp with the government and the parties already taking battle positions. A battle in which the government “descends” with its governmental work at the forefront with an emphasis on its economic and social policies, while the opposition parties, led by SYRIZA, choose sharp confrontation with scandal as their main “weapon”.

The fronts of the battle until the end of the year, after which we will officially enter the pre-election year of 2023, are three and they are placed spatially and politically in the Parliament. The opening fire is expected today at noon in the Parliament’s Institutions and Transparency committee on the surveillance case.

A meeting which is being held following requests submitted by the parliamentary groups SYRIZA, PASOK and KKE, in order to come and position themselves regarding the legal connections of the EYP, but also the operation of Predator, the former secretary general of the government Grigoris Dimitriadis, Mr. .K. Felix Bitzios and Yiannis Lavranos, alleged owners – as the official opposition calls them – of the companies KRIKEL and INTELLEXA and Intellexa’s Israeli businessman Tal Dilian.

The information states that the former director of the prime minister’s office, Grigoris Dimitriadis, will give the “present”, a fact that keeps the opposition parties on alert, who have been preparing for the hearing process for the last time. As far as the rest of the invitees are concerned, SYRIZA has made it clear that it will only accept a personal appearance and not a written statement.

In addition, they are expected to request that the discussion in the committee be public, while in the event that those summoned do not attend, they are expected to request even the forced arrest as a last resort, which according to parliamentary sources, the committee has no right to do under its Rules of Procedure Parliament, as this is not a witness examination procedure, but a hearing procedure.

The opposition is also expected to focus on the stance of ND MPs Kostas Tzavara and Olga Kefalogianni, who have expressed objections to the issue of privacy and its removal. In fact, the Member of Parliament of Ilia has reportedly requested in a letter that he be replaced by the committee and therefore will not be present at today’s meeting, although the reasons he cited have not been made known.
On the contrary, Olga Kefalogianni, will normally be present, however, insisting on her objections to the central handling of the issue of privacy, as in a new interview she gave to the Newsbomb website, she once again expressed her disagreement, noting that the ban on information was wrong of the monitored person established by the government in 2021, just as the new provision for informing the victim after three years and if approval is given by the commander of the EYP and the prosecutor of the intelligence service is also wrong.

The bill for the EYP

Within the week, the second parliamentary battle is expected to take place with the submission of the bill for the institutional framework of the EYP, whose public consultation was completed last week and will be submitted incorporating the changes proposed during the consultation. According to parliamentary estimates, the discussion of the bill is not expected to begin before the end of the current week, in the relevant committee of the Parliament, and when it is finished, it will go to the Plenary, where the goal is to finish the discussion and vote on it before the debate of the 2023 budget.

According to information, however, the government seems open to changes concerning the destruction of records, in terms of the institutional procedure to be followed, but seems to reject possible changes to the time of information of the monitored person, which is currently predicted to be after three years and has caused the month of the opposition parties.

The budget battle

The next stronghold for which the parties will throw themselves into battle is the 2023 budget debate, which will take place over the five days of December 13-17. The government, knowing that the pre-election battle will be fought in the economic sector, has already set the tone in which it will move, emphasizing the social face that its economic policy promotes in the midst of an exogenous crisis, while the prime minister during his last meeting of the Council of Ministers noted that “the overall message our economic policy sends is a message of confidence and realism, but also a message of restrained optimism”.

At the Maximos Palace, they are focusing on a package of measures, which will be implemented gradually, such as, for example, the emergency aid of 250 euros to 2.3 million citizens, the abolition of the solidarity levy and the increase of pensions by 7.75%. At the same time, there is also a reserve of 1 billion in the event that emergency needs need to be met, and alternative scenarios for additional support measures, such as some form of food pass or arrangements for vulnerable borrower households, are already being considered.​

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