The president of PASOK-Movement for Change, Nikos Androulakis countered the accusations against him that his proposal to reject him Kyriakos Mitsotakis and the Alexis Tsipras and to seek a third person of common acceptance for the position of prime minister in case of a cooperation government, leads to political destabilization.

In an extensive and comprehensive interview with the newspaper “Proto Thema”, the president of PASOK-KINAL emphasizes: “The responsibility for stability is proportional and is shared based on the popular verdict. If the Greek people give stronger percentages to other parties, then they have a greater responsibility than us. If Mr. Tsipras agrees with Mr. Mitsotakis that only the leader of the first party should be prime minister, let them make a prenuptial agreement and say that whoever is first among the two of them will become prime minister with the support of the other.”

Mr. Androulakis clearly describes the strategy with which, if necessary, he will enter into discussions in order to obtain governmental cooperation. “If we have a strong mandate, thus the power of negotiation, we will start discussing programmatic convergences with our political opponents. If the programmatic convergences are achieved, we will try to reach an agreement with persons of common acceptance, mainly in the person of the prime minister”, he states and underlines: “A person of common acceptance cannot be the person that I will decide on my own. He will be the person we all agree on. Where there are cooperative governments, they discuss programs and persons of common acceptance.”

“Those who have been the protagonists of the problems cannot be the protagonists of the solutions. That is why we say stability, a progressive agenda and convergences in program and in persons who can express political alliances”, he notes.

He went a step further by describing the characteristics of the persons who would man a co-operative government. As Nikos Androulakis says, they must “have political autonomy, a high reliability index, competence, international prestige. And, of course, that the Greek people can lean on them their hopes and aspirations for the future”. He further adds that “we need persons with political and scientific competence who do not need to be parliamentarians, as is also the case in other European countries”.

He insists on his position that the heads of Public Organizations must be chosen through open procedures and not be party appointments with their “term longer than the electoral cycle, five years, so they will not be linked to the next national elections. So that they themselves are not vulnerable to political pressures. The strategic goal is that in the future the ministers will take over their portfolio accompanied by a minimum of collaborators”.

On the occasion of a recent report that everything he says is written on stone” he states emphatically: “…. it is written in stone, for the motherland to stand up, the new generation must stand up. To do this, we must speak the language of truth, credibility and consensus. The new generation cannot see a system that is unrepentant, clientelistic, divisive, that does not respect institutions, justice, that educates them not to believe that politics is the solution. So my primary goal is to build a relationship of trust with the new generation.”

He confirms that the one sure district he will be a candidate for is Heraklion, Crete, and the rest will be announced in due course.

Regarding the elections in Turkey, Nikos Androulakis points out how “whoever is its President on May 15, Europe and the Western factor must announce that the opening to the West, after the period of the last years where Turkey had an amphitheater attitude, it cannot be done at the expense of our country. It must be done based on respect for international law.”

And as far as the fence on the Evros is concerned, the president of PASOK-KINAL maintains that there are borders both on the sea and on the Evros. “Besides, the fence was a PASOK project. Clearly, it should be expanded, but mainly it should be combined with the revision of the Dublin Regulation so that the first receiving countries do not shoulder the refugee and immigration flows exclusively. On this, Mr. Mitsotakis has shown silence in order not to displease his political family, the conservative European right,” he says.