By Yannis Anifantis

Fueling the fire of the political confrontation in the plenary session of the Parliament, opposition MPs threw reports on the prosecutor’s proposal of the seat in the trial of the child rapist, Ilias Michou with the Minister of Justice, Giorgos Floridis to pick up the gauntlet and answer the objections of the minority, with the confrontation also extending to the changes to the criminal code passed in 2019, shortly before the end of the SYRIZA government.

Responding to the opposition’s fire for the prosecutor’s proposal, the Minister of Justice emphasized that “elementary respect for the judicial function requires us to wait for the issuance of the court decision“, with him adding: “There is criticism of the forfeiture of Greek justice and a lack of public confidence due to the trial being held behind closed doors (…) this means that we cannot monitor and we have no information”.

However, Mr. Floridis launched a scathing attack on SYRIZA but also on the New Left for the criminal Codes brought and voted by the Parliament in 2019accusing the Tsipras government of attempting to make the rape of minors a felony to a misdemeanor but backing down due to backlash from members of its own party.

“You wanted rapists to remain unpunished. This was your care for the victims. Finally you reduced the sentence limit to 15 from 20 years”, the Minister emphasized, with Dimitri Tzanakopoulos shouting from the benches “you are lying” and the tension escalated further:

GEORGE FLORIDES: “You shed crocodile tears. Your concern was to acquit the rapists of minors!”

DIMITRIS TZANAKOPOULOS: “Shame on you!”

GEORGE FLORIDES: “Shout all you want! here are the papers, the statements of the SYRIZA MPs, not mine, the SYRIZA MPs and thanks to them the order was saved!”

However, he joined the confrontation again the issue of the Novartis case with the minister stressing: “There is institutional memory in the way. (…)The behaviors of some officials sometimes do not tarnish the entire institution. The stigma of this attempt, Mr. Tzanakopoulos, that you went to the Areopagus to set up the biggest scandal of Novartis and your leader came out and clearly says that there is a scandal. It requires a lot of attention when you refer to the authority of justice when you went to attack it, when you try to send political opponents to a Special Court because they were opponents”

He raised the gauntlet on behalf of SYRIZA, Alexandros Avlonitis, accusing the minister of attempted slander: “The passion of the minister when he refers to SYRIZA and deliberately distorts reality is impressive. Everyone in the country knows that the passing of the Criminal Code in 2019 was done on the proposal of a law-making committee brought by the SYRIZA government as such and had started studying the amendment 10 years later. When the proposal comes like this, it is either voted on as a whole or not. The minister is hiding this, he has been slandered for a long time.”

Dimitris Tzanakopoulos once again directed his fire at the Minister: “The fact that he is a neophyte and suffers from the janissary syndrome does not give him the right to come here to lie and slander (…) The lie, the slander proves that you are not here as a Minister, you are as a government propagandist of the most extreme right-wing views”.

“Let’s see who’s lying: The report cites the announcement of Amnesty International, which speaks of unacceptable article 336 filed at the time. Also, there are statements here, by the SYRIZA MP, Annetas Kavadia and Maria Theleritis, that you say an attempt to escalate the crime of rape according to the threat to a misdemeanor is unacceptable and we are not going to vote for it. Deputies G. Dimaras and Yiannis Tsironis declared that they would not vote for it. These objections, and the dialogue and the reports, were not made on a non-existent issue”, replied the Minister.