“How is it that your president is an expatriate, who has been defending the most active role of expatriates throughout the years, and suddenly you retreat from this attitude and say a big no”addressed SYRIZA-PS n Minister of the Interior Niki Kerameosshortly after the Socrates Famous clarified that “SYRIZA will not advocate for a bill which the government leaves incomplete, with serious democratic problems, which offends basic principles of the Constitution” and that obviously “there will be no SYRIZA vote because the opposition has proven consistent but the government has proven both inadequate and inconsistent.”

“Your presidentfrom what I understand, will tour foreign countries ahead of the European elections. Now, I imagine the next period. Expatriate Greeks will have a question for him. His former fellow citizens in America, for example. They will have a question. Why does the official opposition not vote for the postal vote when there is this possibility”said Niki Kerameos, now putting the postal vote at the center of the informal pre-election confrontation, in view of the European elections and the way the parties stood on the government’s legislative initiative.

“We are discussing here and we are in a microcosm. The big picture outside is different. The big picture, both for the Greeks inside the territory and for the Greeks outside the territory, who watch us again and again and the decades pass in between, is that they are concerned about one thing. “Will you finally give us”, they say, “the right to vote by letter, without restrictions?”. That’s what they’re asking. And the truth is that at the beginning you said you were in favor. But since then many inconsistencies have happened”said Niki Kerameos and invited Sokratis Famellos to explain “how is it possible for a party to vote on the principle of a bill, to say yes, on the principle, and an hour later, to vote yes on the proposal of unconstitutionality. In other words, what he voted for is unconstitutional.”

He persisted noting that it is a corollary of the one to say that you are in favor of the postal votefor Greek citizens abroad, for the European elections, abut say no to the national elections. “What do you say to a Greek citizen who lives in Buenos Aires; Yes, in the European elections, vote by postal vote, but in the national elections, take a plane, travel three hours, to go to North America, where there is a polling station, and vote from there. And how come you first say yes to postal voting and then say no”said Niki Kerameos.

The Minister of the Interior called SYRIZA’s proposal blatantly unconstitutionalas reflected in his own amendment filed today in the bill and provides for four constituencies for the expatriates to be represented in the Parliament with the corresponding seats.

“Mr Famellos referred to his proposal SYRIZA, for the right of Greeks living abroad to be elected. You want the vote of the emigrants to count only for the four MPs and not for the overall election result. So you want different gravity. Less weight in the vote of emigrants in relation to the vote of voters within the territory. This Mr. Famelle is blatantly unconstitutional. Is this your suggestion? But go out and tell the expats that you want them to have a second class votethe expatriate Greeks”, said Niki Kerameos.

Commenting on the review that accepts the amendment for the establishment of postal voting, of foreign voters, and in the national elections, the Minister of the Interior underlined that the object of the bill is to facilitate the exercise of the right to vote, through postal voting, and therefore yesterday’s amendment by the government is absolutely relevant to the object of the bill, because it aims to facilitate voters, through postal voting. SYRIZA claims that there was no dialogue, although we have incorporated its proposals into the text of the bill, the interior minister also said.