The president of SYRIZA-PS, Alexis Tsipras, launched a fierce attack on the prime minister in an interview he granted today to the MEGA news bulletin, characterizing him as “arrogant” and suggesting that “there is the possibility” today “someone is blackmailing half the political system and the half a business system”.

Answering a question about the opinion polls, he underlined that the “critical issue” is “who will go to the ballot box”.

“If 12%, which is roughly the undecideds in all opinion polls, goes to the ballot box. And especially if the young people, who are 450,000 voters, go to the ballot box”, he emphasized and appealed again “to the young people, the undecided, to go to the polls to refute this result”.

“Because if they don’t deny this result, if they don’t deny the polls, it has nothing to do with SYRIZA and Tsipras. We will have another four years of a prime minister who doesn’t care, who doesn’t feel. He is arrogant,” he added.

In addition, he criticized the prime minister for “underestimating the intelligence of citizens”, accusing him that “a month and a half after a terrible event and because he has an election in front of him, he is telling people who lost their children that they are using their pain as a tool”. “The most important thing is that we will have for another four years a government that does not care about the problems of the citizens, that has made injustice the norm. The majority of households are immersed in accuracy. There is a very big risk that in the next period we will be faced with a tsunami of auctions. Health care and public universities are in a terrible mess. I think we need to talk about this,” said Al. Tsipras.

Asked to comment on the “style” of the posts of the SYRIZA candidate, Pavlou Polakis, he said that “it has this characteristic, but it also has other positive elements” and clarified that for him personally “the phrases and expressions” are “neither in his way”, but neither does he believe that “ultimately one can win something with a toxicity in political confrontation”.

Regarding the possibility of a “special purpose” government that was asked about in the cross-channel, Al. Tsipras made it clear that his “desire” and “goal” is “a stable and long-lasting government the day after the elections”. “Between the first party, which I aspire to be SYRIZA, and the third party, which will probably be the party of Mr. Androulakis, with which I believe we can find a basis for programmatic convergence,” he explained.

In response to a question about Nikos Androulakis’ statements that he cannot work with someone who called Andreas Papandreou “Pinochet”, he emphasized that “things change after the elections” and that “the Greek people will form some associations”, which will they could “enable the formation of a progressive government between SYRIZA and PASOK-KINAL”. “I think that the first person who will have every reason to want this government to move forward is Mr. Androulakis himself,” he added, while when asked how he would deal with a possible condition “that Venizelos and Loverdos be included” he commented that “no he will solve Mr. Androulakis’ internal party issues” and that “the crucial topic of the discussion the next day, if the correlations come out, will be the program and that should be it”.

Regarding whether he is still aiming for a progressive government of multi-party cooperation or only with PASOK-KINAL, Al. Tsipras reiterated that he considers it “possible” to form a government between the first and third parties. As he pointed out, “Mr. Varoufakis is the one who excluded himself, from the invitation to the alliance, or the progressive convergence of the progressive forces” because he raised “issues that have expired since 2015, about the currency, and which have no basis for progressive cooperation and programmatic progressive cooperation”. “So this obsession probably gave him a very big gift – I don’t know if he was in agreement with Mr. Mitsotakis – and he excluded himself from the invitation of the progressive forces”, he added, commenting that “if I were in Mr. Mitsotakis, I would send him a bouquet of Mr. Varoufakis”.

As far as the KKE is concerned, he said that “in a process of simple proportionality, perhaps for the first time after many years, after the beginning of the 90s, it must be positioned” and described as “unhistorical” the comment “what Plastiras what Papagos”, noting that it is not the same as “a government that will restore collective agreements, repeal the Hatzidakis bill, therefore restore normality at work, the Labor Inspection Body, we will not have unpaid overtime with a government that will continue all this”. In any case, he estimated that with PASOK if they have a cumulative percentage of 46%, they can have a government with “151-152 MPs”.

Continuing Al. Tsipras repeated his opinion that “if Mr. Mitsotakis is in front for a while, he will not risk a second election contest, because he has cut the bridges with all the parties” in contrast to SYRIZA which “will have too many reservoirs to draw voters” and that “he will try to find the possibility of forming a government with Mr. Velopoulos, who has an ideological affinity”. “Even if the beans don’t come out, at least that’s how I heard the proposal of Mr. Mitsotakis himself, of one party but of many colors, possibly to ask for MPs from other parties, which in my opinion is not ethical. Not to mention no heavier expression,” he added.

Besides, regarding the possibility of getting the second order of formation after Mr. Mitsotakis, he replied: “Obviously, I will use the opportunity given to me by the Constitution to chat with all the leaders who I consider to be closer, but I think that we will go to second ballots, that will be done”. He promised, however, that “if SYRIZA comes first, it will do everything to have a government without going to second elections”.

Asked about the Preliminary Investigation he stated he would do for the wiretapping and whether he would also proceed to a Special Court, Al. Tsipras replied that “before we go to the Special Court”, the priority is not to “cover up” the case and indeed “when we have the confession of the Prime Minister himself that there was no national reason for the surveillance”. “In any favored Western state, favored rule of law where there are rules, what happened is not just a political scandal.

It is illegal and a felony to monitor political leaders, leaders of the Armed Forces, parliamentarians, MEPs, business people, journalists. Well, this, in my opinion, in no serious state can be closed like this”, he emphasized, speaking of a “cover-up operation” and placing the responsibility on Mr. Dojako because, as he said, “he is in charge of the investigations”.

It also accused him of “trying to prevent an honest ex-judge, Mr. Rammos, head of the Independent Authority, the constitutional authority for ensuring the privacy of communications, from finding evidence of the crime in the telecommunications providers, with a opinion”.

Citing, also, the conclusion of the PEGA committee of the European Parliament, according to which, as he said, “Predator was a thing with the EYP” he noted that “if the Justice does not take a step”, it is “clear” that “we have to take the political responsibility of a progressive parliamentary majority to set up a Pre-Investigation, with the main people responsible for this scandal, which are the Prime Minister and the ministers who managed this case”.

Asked which ministers he was referring to, he said that it was a “series” of ministers, in the first instance “the Minister of Justice”, “the Deputy Prime Minister” who “put their signatures so that the competent Committee, the ADAE, for someone to appeal to find out if he was being watched or not”.

“The goal is for this great scandal, which I consider to be one of the biggest we have experienced since the postcolonial period and after, not to be covered up. Because at this time we are talking – everything that happened, happened in relation to the past -, this as we speak, there are thousands of gigabytes, which are the results of these surveillances”, he added, stressing that “there is currently the possibility that some people are blackmailing half the political system and half the business system”. As he clarified, he does not consider that the “goal” of blackmailing Androulakis, as he himself said, has “succeeded” and he cannot know “if there is active blackmail”, but “no serious European democracy would allow such a scandal without clarification, without light, without truth and without accountability”.

Turning to the issue of the Tempe tragedy and the subsequent responsibilities, he criticized the government for “the way the government handled it” the next day, accusing the prime minister himself of “hypocrisy” because, among other things, “he had Karamanlis washed away with the vote in Serres¨, which as he said “insults” not only “the 57 families who lost their people”, but “the average citizen”.

He also denied the comparison with Nikos Pappa, who has been convicted by the Supreme Special Court, stressing that “the decision of the Court is respected” but one concerns the “felony of putting money into the public treasury” and the other “a crime “.

Closing, finally, with the issue of Golden Dawn and whether it claims the votes of its voters, he said that for the left the “battle with fascism is a daily battle” and “our target is those people who would vote for Golden Dawn, let’s take them, let’s win them from the lines of the Far Right and from the lines of anti-democratic ideology and attitude and explain to them that it is not an anti-systemic thing to vote for Golden Dawn”.