Alexis Tsipras launched a fierce attack on Kyriakos Mitsotakis that, ahead of the elections, “intimidates, terrorizes, blackmails the workers who made them work in a labor jungle regime”, in a speech from Chios where he toured the city center and talked to citizens.

At the same time, he emphasized that “the elections with simple proportionality are not elections of loose voting, because these elections will produce a government”. “So a relaxed vote means Mitsotakis, disgraceful profit, injustice, perpetuation of the great inequalities, perpetuation of the drama we lived 4 years ago” he underlined. He pointed out that there are more than 450,000 young people who vote for the first time, to emphasize that everyone, especially young people, should keep in mind that “the most powerful protest vote is the one that will hurt the establishment, it is the vote that will make the Mitsotakis regime to be defeated. And defeat of Mitsotakis and ND means victory of SYRIZA”.

The president of SYRIZA PS argued that “change is the great desire of the great majority and many will make their wish come true at the ballot box on May 21st. On election night, the lies end.” He noted that on “May 21st we have before us a big dilemma: If the country will continue for another 4 years on this path of discredit, deception, looting of income, the widening of inequalities or if we will take the big and decisive step of change to get society back on its feet, to give a voice to those who have none, to give power to workers and the middle class.” He commented that “at the ballot box on May 21 the dilemma is: Mitsotakis or change?”, expressing his belief that “the vast majority of citizens have decided on change and a government of progressive cooperation that will put the economy and society back on its feet” .

“Mr. Mitsotakis intimidates, terrorizes, blackmails employees”

Mr. Tsipras stated that he saw “a shameful video circulating on the Internet where he is an employer in a business, he has his employees and in the style of cardinals with the Minister of Development Mr. Georgiadis next to him as a supervisor, he blackmails them, bullies them and he terrifies and tells them ‘I’ve told you worse another time, now I’ll tell you more gently, I’m not a democrat, be careful what you vote for'”. He commented that “this is an image that has now gone online because it was filmed, but it is a common image in workplaces”. He said that “Mr. Mitsotakis intimidates, terrorizes, blackmails the workers he made them work in a labor jungle regime. He abolished the 8-hour working day, the obligation to pay overtime, collective agreements. And now he wants, by putting unconscious employers, to blackmail the workers to vote for his boss, the ND”. “The effort is wasted,” said the person addressing Mr. Mitsotakis, to add that “the only way for them not to vote for something different from the ND, to not support the change, to not send a strong message to the ballot box by voting SYRIZA PS to change their lives, is to deprive them of the possibility to go to vote, as it did for 250,000 seasonal workers who does not give them the possibility to go to the ballot box.

He emphasized that no matter what Mr. Mitsotakis does, “the world has understood that these 4 years were wasted, many want change as much as it blackmails and terrorizes. At the ballot box he will get an answer: So far with extortion, so far with terrorism, so far with nepotism, so far with obscene profit, so far with the labor jungle, so far with injustice, on May 21 justice returns to this place”.

Abolition of Minimum Import Base

Mr. Tsipras made a special reference to young people. He said that the government targeted them: “wood in the squares, wood in the universities and fences for their admission to higher education, the first thing Mrs. Kerameos did was to institute the Minimum Admission Base and expel 20,000 students every year from public universities”.

Addressing all the children who are now fighting for the nationwide exams, Mr. Tsipras said that “the political change and the progressive cooperation government on May 21 will enable one of the first legislative initiatives we will take to be the abolishing this wretched immoral Minimum Import Base. Therefore, those taking exams should know that in June there will be no cutter for Mrs. Kerameos. Twenty thousand more students will have access to higher education.”

“The worst government of the Right”

Mr. Tsipras said that the current one is “the worst government of the right since the post-colonialism and after, because this is not just a government of the right but a government of the big interests”. He said it also appeals to long-time ND voters “who feel ashamed of the surveillance, who feel ashamed when they don’t have enough money to make the month, who feel ashamed to pay the most expensive gas in all of Europe and that the middle class has become fed on vouchers ». He said many want the change because “they have seen their income shrink,” stressing that “we have a plan to give breath and perspective, a plan that puts a limit on the profitability of the few and powerful.” “You don’t go anywhere with the passes,” he commented, accusing the government of a ploy that, through the maintenance of high indirect taxes and subsidies afterwards, amounts to plundering the income of the vast majority “so that it goes into the pockets of five major electricity companies, two- three refineries and all the business groups that have built a cartel in the food sector”. He said that “they are preparing for the next period for the middle class a big tsunami of first home auctions”.

“There is a perspective, a possibility, a plan, a solution with a government that will care about the ordinary citizen and not the cartels, the few and powerful”, he said, while he argued that despite the relevant pre-election commitments of the ND in 2019, “this government deceived the great majority, the middle class, the pensioners, the wage earners, he deceived and targeted the workers and the young.” He commented that “those who then pretended to be super-patriots and protested about our foreign policy that upgraded the country, where are they today when Turkey campaigns for its tourism by saying ‘Turkaegean’?” They are nowhere because they had presented themselves as excellent but probably forgot to put an ‘x’ between the word. They are not excellent, they are useless, because only useless people could hand over the name of the Aegean to Turkey to do an advertising campaign for its tourism.” “Let’s welcome the Rafal but if we don’t have the ability to protect our islanders, they won’t have doctors, hospitals, air transport… This is our national duty, to protect the integrity of our homeland of course but also to protect the islanders” , write down.

Mr. Tsipras said that Greece together with Bulgaria has the lowest per capita income in relation to purchasing power in the entire EU, to emphasize that “if we have to have a national goal in the coming years it is not to stay in Europe – we solved this when some people wanted to throw us out like Schäuble – now our goal must be to become Europe, for Greece to become a normal European country again which means: wages, income, affordable prices, social state, Social Security, a country where the state will respect the citizen”. He added that “the state must stop being this partisan unmeritorious fiefdom.” “The state”, he continued, “which we saw in the tragedy of Tempe, you get on a train and you don’t know if you will reach your destination, because some bribed to put an untrained station master with no previous service, because some wanted to privatize and critical services in the railway infrastructure”. He commented that “undaunted a few days after this tragedy, instead of apologizing they tried to manage it with a communication show and went to Parliament to bring a bill for the privatization of water as well.” “They are neither sacred nor sacred. Energy, water, health, education cannot be a commodity,” he said.

“First chance to govern by implementing our program”

Mr. Tsipras emphasized that this is the first opportunity for SYRIZA to govern by implementing its program, without coercion, without memoranda, without troika, “to implement with a government of progressive cooperation a program of respite, social support and recovery of the economy, a program of real change”.

Referring to the plan released yesterday, he reiterated that a progressive cooperation government will do four basic things: increase wages, reduce prices, regulate debts, fair and efficient government.

In particular, an increase in wages by legislating from the first day the minimum to 880 euros plus the automatic price index adjustment on an annual basis, an increase in the public sector as well, unfreezing of the three years, reinstatement of the 13th pension, awarding retroactive benefits to all beneficiaries and from July 1 distribution also to those who have the personal difference of the increases of 7.5%.

He said that the reduction and containment of prices can be achieved by the immediate reduction of the VAT to 6% for food products, “even to zero VAT we can go as a matter of urgency”, reduction of the VAT to the lowest permissible levels provided by the EU and abolition of the social security payment for farmers and breeders”.

For the settlement of debts, he referred to the plan presented by SYRIZA “and it also has the signature of a politician who was identified with the protection of the first residence in all the difficult years of the memorandum, Loukas Katselis”. “A program that aims to make the arrangements mandatory, to set operating rules for the funds and to proceed with sustainable arrangements”.

Regarding the commitment to a fair and efficient state, he commented that “we can because we were not born princes. We do not believe that the state and the country belong to us. The state belongs to the one who has to serve, the Greek people are the only owner, that’s why we are the only ones who can change this state”.

Transportation and health equivalent

Speaking about the islands, Mr. Tsipras referred to the transport equivalent and now next to it, the health equivalent.

He initially mentioned, speaking about Chios, that the SYRIZA government decided “something that has been stagnating for years, the airport that became human and is an important hub for the development of the island”. He then said that in adverse conditions “we supported the hospitals, we put 2.5 million uninsured people in public health, we abolished the 5 euros for admission to outpatient clinics, we fixed the budgets of the hospitals and built 128 new TOMY. He also mentioned that in 2019 the health center in Chios had 8 doctors, while today it has 3. “If we do not support the region and our islands, and the public health infrastructure, we cannot talk about justice. We applied the metaphorical equivalent, they gnawed it and discredited it. We are saying that not only will we apply it normally and payments will be made on time, but we will also extend it for students who are in schools on islands, and for visitors to increase island tourism.”

He emphasized that “a second vision next to this, is the health equivalent: to form those conditions where the state will be next to the islanders and their health and care needs”. He emphasized that “the state must provide all citizens who live on the islands with the support – both financially and in health structures – to cover the needs of travel to the nearest hospitals if necessary.” He also said that SYRIZA will support merchant marine academies, strengthen mastic producers, stand by fishermen, support the agricultural and livestock world.