“The New Left will not only vote against today’s bill, but also commits that it will not accept fait accompli and that it will activate all institutional and social counterweights to protect the Constitution and defend the public university”, stressed Alexis Haritsis speaking in the Parliament for non-state universities.

The president of the New Left accused the government of inviting the national delegation to violate the Constitution and underlined that “a new progressive majority will abolish this law”.

He said that the proposal to the progressive opposition to table a motion of no confidence against the government was about creating a front against the “violation of the Constitution”, in order for “the prime minister to come and apologize” and for an additional three days for the society to hear the arguments of those who defend the public university. He commented that “unfortunately the proposal was not accepted and funny arguments followed”. He said that if the problem is that the proposal was tabled by the New Left, “let’s withdraw it, you table it and we will be the first to sign it.”

Mr. Haritsis said that the government “opens wide the door to business”, that it invites the national delegation to flagrantly violate the Constitution and that “you took care to secure on-demand opinions even from professors who also have a professional interest”. He accused Mr. Mitsotakis that with his references to “buffoons” he tried again to cultivate an image of discrediting the public university “with the obvious purpose of passing your current anti-social counter-reform more easily to public opinion”. “You hate and loathe the public university,” he said.

He pointed out with regard to Article 16 that the restrictions are so clear that there is no need for interpretation and that the government has violated it five times with this bill: “One because the establishment of higher education institutions by private individuals is prohibited, as paragraph 8 of of article 16. One, because the state will no longer be the exclusive provider of higher education, as provided for in paragraph 5. One, because the professors of HEIs will not be public officials, as provided for in paragraph 6. One, because with the current law they are introduced out the window and tuition fees in public universities with Article 58. And another bonus … as, apparently, when the Minister of Education ordered public universities to conduct online exams he flagrantly violated their self-government protected by the Constitution.

Mr. Haritsis asked why the government does not wait for the debate on the revision of article 16 but rushes to abolish it with a simple law. “Why this urgency to openly violate the Constitution?”, he said, commenting that “today the Greek Right is trying to put into practice what for decades has been its “sacred cow”. The answers given by the president of the New Left are that “the current bill is requested by the elites to protect the social position of their children across generations” and “it is a step back in the de-democratization of education”. He added that the bill, which “simply baptizes colleges as universities”, is also wanted by BSE and other collective bodies representing the business world. In addition, he argued that the bill is wanted by “the politicians of the Greek Right, who perceive institutions as mechanisms to be manipulated and for whom the post-colonial university has always been troublesome as it continued to be a space that produced resistance, critical discourse and democratic culture. And as such you have been trying for 50 years to subjugate it.”

The president of the New Left spoke about six lies of the Minister of Education, Kyriakos Pierrakakis, speaking of a “party of lies in which he himself is the host”. In particular, he said that the minister says that 40,000 students are studying abroad, but he is silent that the vast majority of students abroad are postgraduates, not undergraduates. For undergraduates, the New Left’s answer is the abolition of the EBE, funding and staffing of public universities. “When the previous government instituted a new law department in Patras, the ND rebelled because it said that the labor market could not absorb the graduates of another law school. Where is Mrs. Kerameos today to explain to us why the graduates of a public law school do not fit in the labor market, but the graduates of five private convenience stores do?” she commented.

Regarding Mr. Pierrakakis’ argument that the state does not exercise sovereign power when it lets colleges unregulated to grant professional rights without conditions and that is why we need to regulate them, Mr. Haritsis said: “Let’s regulate private colleges as what they are, as private schools and not as universities. And to set limits and conditions for the granting of professional rights. Something that the Commission, of course, would not prevent us from doing, as education policy is and remains under the circumstances a national responsibility”.

“Lie third. Mr. Pierrakakis says that he does not establish private universities. And then he says that he is not establishing universities, just that foreign institutions are being established in Greece which in their country of origin are for-profit and that these institutions will be approximately charitable organizations”, he commented. He added that at the same time “even the article prohibiting the distribution of profits to the relevant foreign institutions was removed from the final draft law under vote”.

Fourthly, regarding the fact that the current draft law serves the internationalization of Greek higher education, Mr. Haritsis wondered if “anyone brought here an objection to the internationalization of public universities.”

He commented, fifth, that “the government is trying to sell beads to the natives, referring to Harvard which has an endowment equal to 25% of Greek GDP and almost 5,000 professors.” “Who are you kidding? The big universities you promise are the IEKs that through franchise will become universities and the private ones in Cyprus that have been created with funds from the tourism and construction industry there,” he said.

Finally, regarding the fact that the creation of private universities will not affect the funding of public universities, Mr. Haritsis emphasized that “by introducing private universities into higher education, you open the way for them to also claim funding from the regular budget (for reasons of equality and competition)’. He said that the private institutions would sue the State for distortion of competition and force it to match their funding with that of the public university, and thus “the already woefully underfunded public university would be forced to share this meager funding with the privately”.

In addition, he stated that today’s “counter-reform” will directly affect the public universities of the region as from “the first day of operation of the new private for-profit institutions in the center of Athens”, “they will absorb the demand from the public universities of the province and this will automatically shrink their financing”.

He said that for the New Left “the University will always be the society of knowledge, the community of students and teachers”, noting that there are three central elements that differentiate universities from other teaching institutions: academics, academic freedom and scientific research-the knowledge capital. “The New Left will be present in the Parliament and in the social struggles. We will contribute with all our forces to the revitalization of democracy”, he stressed.

Referring to the visit of Kyriakos Mitsotakis to Odessa, Mr. Haritsis asked what was the purpose of the trip, noting that the prime minister must inform the national delegation in detail. He asked why he does not visit Gaza as well, to comment that he also follows “like most Western leaders, the logic of two measures and two stations”.