“Life in Greece in 2023 is linked to insecurity“, emphasized the head of the New Left, Alexis Haritsis, during his intervention in the Parliament in the debate on the budget, which, as he stated, he will vote against.

Al. Haritsis spoke of people who “feel poor, even if they are not” and of a “society that does not believe in itself”, while he stressed that the budget should respond to “how we will have policies that challenge the core of inequality , in how we will plan our country’s exit from productive stagnation, in how we will fortify ourselves against the environmental crisis that threatens us, and finally, in how we will shield our Republic from the fatalism and cynicism of “nothing changes and if anything changes it will only be for the worse.”

On the contrary, he said, the government “reproduces a distorted development model based on opportunistic profits and super profits, on cheap development, while being indifferent to the risks and challenges of the future”, accusing it of only being interested in “the big private interests that over the years of the New Democracy are living their best days”.

He also noted that 2023 meant “alarm for the three major issues of our time: the climate crisis, social inequalities, the productive model of the country”, referring to the fires and destruction of Thessaly until the inflation shot up.

In this context, he spoke of a distorted model of development, which the government serves: “A model of state-fed capitalism whose only goal is the accumulation of unproductive wealth and the search for easy profit at the expense of the many. In 2023, Greek growth – the one celebrated by New Democracy – is exhausted in three sectors: tourism, construction and real estate. The same sectors of the economy that flourished before 2008 with the known results: the time of the crisis and the Memoranda”.

He also accused the government that its policy is reduced to a “management based on the premium of the wealth of the few, parasitism and entanglement”.

“So let the growth candy finally stop. And let’s face the truth”, he characteristically said and referred to three “data”: firstly, that “Greece is on a trajectory of divergence from Europe”, in terms of productivity, secondly, that the government follows a “model of cheap development based on low wages’ and thirdly, that the ‘rendezvous’ with ‘strategic choices concerning the future of the country’, such as the energy transition, digital infrastructure, resilience and sustainability, has been missed.

“We need a policy of urgency. We need a radical change of course”, he underlined and continued, presenting the main positions of the “New Left” regarding its plan for climate justice, social justice, restarting Democracy, which “conflicts with the interests of inaction and of speculation” and “hits the ideological core of the hegemony of the Right”.

In particular, as he noted, the New Left submits its own proposal for a budget that serves the vital needs of the country, which is based on three pillars: the developmental state, the social state and the green transition.

As he said, in the first pillar, “the main goal is a “new development model””, with “a shift to the primary and secondary sectors” and “institutional reforms that will shield the country from the next episodes of the climate and economic crisis”.

In the second pillar, it is “the mitigation of inequalities”, “with a tax policy that will not maintain the anti-social phenomenon of indirect taxes being higher than direct taxes” and that will be “based on a fair redistributive system”.

Regarding the third pillar, he emphasized that “the state, our country, must immediately proceed with an integrated national climate transition plan”, commenting that “the government’s climate law is obviously light years away from this goal”. “The green transition should be socially just, based on the participation of citizens, democratically designed and should be guided by the protection of society, not the profits of specific interests”, he underlined.

“If we don’t design budgets that respond to citizens’ feeling that they are unprotected and stuck in the fear of impoverishment, if we don’t proceed with policies to shield society from the threat of growing social inequalities, if we don’t take decisive steps so that the answers to the of the environmental challenges to be in favor of the many, our Democracy will be powerless”, warned Al. Haritsis, while he spoke of a “deep political problem” because “our democracy does not inspire”.

Referring to the issue that arose this week with the amendment for migrant land workers, he commented “we are not concerned with your internal party problems and the battle of balances”, but “something more serious, the systematic caressing of the most phobic instincts of Greek society ». He even stated that “the New Left will vote for the amendment, even though it comes very late and only partially addresses the issue”.

Besides, he also referred to the complaints of the Minister of Justice that “the criminal codes of 2019 defend the rights of criminals”, speaking of “criminal populism” and accusing the government of “hypocritically invoking the need to fight the extreme right while simultaneously adopting the agenda her”.

Closing his speech, Al. Haritsis stated that the New Left wants to prove to all those “affected by the successive crises” that “politics matters” and that it will do “politics for those who are not dominant” and “above all for young people”.