“ND announces and promises things that it will not implement, because it has not declared them to the European partners and the fiscal space is absolutely specific and limited. And he also has a hidden agenda that he will implement and he is not saying it”, stressed Alexis Tsipras in an interview with Ionian TV.

The president of SYRIZA PS commented that “Mr. Skylakakis was forced to reveal and admit the real program of the ND” and that he would advise Mr. Mitsotakis “to come out and apologize and say ‘I’m sorry I deceived you, and the next four years I will not implement what I announced, but what I gave to the European partners.”

He said that based on the ND program, the National Health Service will have fewer doctors and nurses in the next four years, that “essentially there will be no increase in the average salary, the purchasing power of the employee who receives the average salary”. He said, among other things, that “they are costless and in the air” a series of expenses such as that the ambulance will come in 7 minutes, that we will have the possibility for 50,000 more places in nurseries, that the waiting time in the operating rooms will be reduced by 50%. He noted that “in the Stability Program, what is submitted and clearly written, is that the primary expenditure of the State will be reduced cumulatively in the next four years by 10%. By 1.1 billion euros in real terms.

Mr. Tsipras emphasized that the SYRIZA program foresees a reduction of VAT and VAT, taxation of excess profits in the “cartels” of energy, refining, supply chain, a ceiling on the profit in the production of electricity, in order to create the conditions in order to finance the real needs of Greek society, the National Social Security, education. He accused the ND of “having completely let the ESY collapse”, while SYRIZA “despite the tough fiscal conditions, we included 2.5 million uninsured people in medical care and at the same time we hired over 300 permanent rescuers in EKAV and got 143 new ambulances ». He said that it is a strategic choice of Mr. Mitsotakis not to support the National Social Security System and that what Mr. Pneumatikos said “is the hidden plan of the ND”.

Mr. Tsipras said that this will be “a completely new electoral contest” and there the citizen will have before him the basic dilemma of who will rule the next day, adding that there are two competing programs of power, SYRIZA and ND. He argued that “the rest of the progressive parties missed this train when they refused the prospect of cooperation in simple proportionality and they are not parties of power either. The KKE is a protest party. PASOK since 2012 is a party that we are used to as a supplement to right-wing governments.”

He said that ND wants with the 50 bonus seats to be able to “build a regime the next day” and “Mr. Mitsotakis wants to be ruler, his plan is to have no opposition the next day”, is a multi-party, “discredited” parliament “and to be able to govern undisturbed in a plan that has a horizon and the change of the Constitution to make profiteering constitutionally guaranteed in a number of other areas: water, Education, – in addition to Health – the energy”. He emphasized that every progressive citizen must vote not to allow “the threat we saw from the mouth of Mrs. Bakoyannis” to be carried out, “which was not only addressed to the Muslim minority, but to every social category that can be found the next day against the plans of the ND government”.

Speaking about the fatal shipwreck off Pylos, Mr. Tsipras said that “even if some people think that we should not talk about issues of this kind, sensitive issues, I will always speak because as a politician in my political journey I have never looked at the political cost, when it was to defend values”. He said he asked questions and got conflicting answers. He also blamed the EU for its migration strategy, arguing that “this tactic of fortress Europe is doomed to failure”. He emphasized that “instead of fighting among ourselves about whether the solution is border guarding or saving people, let’s agree that the solution is both border guarding and saving people.” In addition, he emphasized that Greece must claim, together with all the countries of the European South, another Pact on Migration and Asylum, which does not give responsibility only to the first receiving countries, but distributes it equally among all member states and has permanent, legal migration routes and the possibility for refugees to seek asylum in EU countries in a single European Asylum Service. He stated that the ND “as a government has followed an operational tactic, which poses risks to human life, and above all a communication tactic which invests in the demagoguery of the fence. The fence has suddenly become our national symbol.” “The fence does exist, but it is not against all diseases. And it is not the solution that can solve our problems. At the same time, another immigration policy is needed.”

Speaking about the Tempe tragedy and his recent meeting with Iphigenia’s mother, Mr. Tsipras said that “these people are shocked by the fact that suddenly, while all of Greece was dealing with them, with their pain, suddenly the word ‘Tempe’ became a forbidden word in the media. And no one deals with them.” He underlined that it was everyone’s promise that there would be justice and commented that “fortunately, we see that there is a glimmer of hope from the actions of the investigator in Larissa and the Judicial Authorities”. Speaking about the conclusion of the judicial experts that was published yesterday, he emphasized that “they say that this accident did not happen because it was a bad time or a bad country, but because there was no remote control, which existed until 2019, there was a fire and then it was never restored.” “So, everything they told us was a lie. To cover up what? Some very serious responsibilities”, he underlined, referring to the ND government. He said that “it is a matter of Justice to investigate the causes and the culprits, no matter how high they are”, because “justice and justice are not revenge, it is our obligation to avoid other tragedies in the future”. He also mentioned that Mr. Mitsotakis “the day before yesterday we saw that he requested, immediately after the elections, from the European Commission, that the safety projects on the railway be excluded from the prerequisites for the disbursement of the money from the Recovery Fund. Which means they have no intention of advancing anything.”

Mr. Tsipras also spoke about the Rhodope, stating that Mr. Mitsotakis showed “how irresponsible he is towards national issues and how ruthless”. “He tried to set a trap for me by using the EYP as a tool. And he sent me a document, to come out after two weeks – supposedly top secret – and make a selective leak of this document to the newspaper Proto Thema, and say: ‘Look, Tsipras is a traitor because he has MPs who have relationships with the Turkish consulate'”. But, he noted, in this document “he also had an identical reference for his own blue-collar parliamentary candidate, Mr. Katrantzis. Well, at the same time that with too much audacity and hypocrisy he was abandoning me for the SYRIZA candidates, based on the document he had sent me, he had his own MP, who mentioned in the document that he is “armed in Ankara””. who also “three days before the elections, had come out and said that ‘the Muslim minority of Thrace are Western-Thracian Turks'”.

Mr. Tsipras stated that he did not say this from the first moment because he had the feeling that Mr. Mitsotakis “will not lead the political life of the country to this irresponsible race” and that now Erdogan is rubbing his hands. “When I saw this going on, I had to come out and tell the truth.” He noted that ND cannot tolerate calling SYRIZA a “national exception”, underlining that “all our choices were choices of patriotic responsibility” and that “we do not play with the motherland”.

Asked if he would be “here” the next day, he said that “our duty now is to do everything in our power until the last minute at the polls to reverse this difference.” He added that “even if we do not manage to win now, our duty is the next day to do what is necessary so that very soon SYRIZA-Progressive Alliance, as the trunk, the basic force, the only power and governance force in the area the progressive, very soon to take over the reins of the country, for the benefit of the great social majority, because we always represent them”.