Her position New Left about the government’s proposal regarding the marriage and procreation of same-sex couples, the head of the movement expressed in an interview with ERTNEWS, Alexis Haritsis.

Mr. Haritsis described the government’s proposal as “deficient”, but emphasized that the New Left will vote in favor of any provision concerning the provision of rights.

More detail:

“We as the New Left have taken a clear position from the beginning. And let me say that we have also pushed politically, as we must, in a certain direction. Who is she; This is the full rights to all our fellow citizens. I think we should be absolutely clear when we talk about issues of social and individual rights. They do not fit petty party games or calculations, if you will, numerical ones. Here we must deal with these issues with the institutionality that the seriousness of such issues dictates. So from the first moment we said full rights to everyone and we want a bill to become law of the state that will ensure these full rights in relation to same-sex couples, in relation to marriage and in relation to childbearing.

We will wait to see the proposal that the government will bring first. And of course our intention is to finally make this inalienable right of all citizens a law of the state. Beyond that, from what we have seen so far, from what I have heard from the prime minister, it seems that the proposal that the government will bring or is thinking of bringing is deficient. For example, there is the issue of the surrogate mother, which has been institutionalized by the Greek state since 2002, so there cannot be two-speed citizens here.

Because we want to be consistent in what we say, we will bring our proposals to the Parliament so that this legislation is complete. And that this legislation fully covers the rights of all our fellow citizens. We cannot help but comment on the fact that yesterday Mr. Mitsotakis essentially turned a blind eye to the more conservative and right-wing wing of his party, effectively giving them the freedom to abstain from the parliamentary process. I consider these to be games and tricks which insult democracy itself and parliamentary institutions, but above all the right of all citizens to have the same rights. We have to be clear here, we have to be clear, there is no room for small-party expedients and I would expect both the government and the other opposition forces – because I also hear voices from the opposition trying to exploit this issue in a small-party way – to we are absolutely clear in what we say to the Greek citizens and the citizens should either agree or disagree but know what the position of each political force is.

We will vote in favor of every provision that moves in the direction of providing full rights to our citizens and we will fight in the Parliament as well. We will fight to have a legislation that will be as complete as possible”.

Referring to non-state universities, he said:

“We said from the beginning that we are against, we oppose this legislation of the government because we believe that in the current conditions what we should be discussing, what Greek society needs is the upgrading of the Greek public university and its support . Unfortunately, with the legislation brought by the government, what it seeks is the creation of clientele, the creation of a market which will degrade the public university, which I remind you is already underfunded compared to the European average, 2.8 compared to 5.5% approximately, that is half”.

For the exact situation, he said:

“Instead of having interventions that were also made in other countries such as for example the zeroing of VAT on basic food items, – because at the moment we are seeing a statistical decrease in inflation and at the same time an explosion of prices on the shelf in basic items, instead of progressing – and I heard Mr. Mitsotakis yesterday and I was impressed, he talked about greed inflation, really now after 2.5 years did Mr. Mitsotakis learn that there is greed inflation in the country? The one who told us that inflation is imported. So what does greed inflation mean? It means that there is profiteering by some big business, big multinational groups at the expense of the consumer public. What are the government’s interventions to stop profiteering? There should be much stricter controls to crack down on this speculation.”

To the question of whether at some point the New Left will pass into another phase, that of turning into a party, he answered by saying:

“Yes of course. The New Left started as a parliamentary group of 11 MPs and in the first period we put a special emphasis on parliamentary work. Of course we will continue the parliamentary work. But at the same time, we are interested in the New Left taking root in Greek society. That is why we are proceeding with a pan-Hellenic meeting of executives from all over Greece over the next two days. And of course, little by little, the New Left will move forward to turn into a party.”

On the subject of the interruption of Eteron’s funding in the SYRIZA party publications and the placement of Polakis, he stated:

“Anyone who doesn’t produce politics produces toxicity. Of course, we will not leave such attacks unanswered, we are not allowed to leave such attacks unanswered, they will get the answer they need politically and, where necessary, legally. In any case, what we are interested in is producing policy. Let’s talk to society, listen to its concerns.”

Source: ERT