By Penelope Galliou

At a time when in SYRIZA the internal party camps are clashing with each other and in PASOK the candidates for the leadership enter the final stretch for the succession situation in the party, the role of the opposition seems to be determined to continue part of ND MPswho are “ranked” in the “rightmost seats” of the party.

They already made their mark with their much-discussed question to the Minister of Finance about the red loans the eleven blue MPswho, despite the immediate response they received, are now declaring publicly that they are determined to exercise their constitutional right and to insist on issues that are of great concern to the citizens and that require the corresponding attention from the government as well.

And although the response of the Minister of Finance, Kostis Hatzidakiscame in record time, for parliamentary data, to the question of the eleven, they themselves do not appear satisfied, directly leaving spikes that they asked about some things and got an answer for others.

“We have a shift in the question, we did not ask if and how much the banks were restructured (…) we asked about the position of the borrowers. This position has not improved” noted in an interview the MP Rodopis of the ND and one of the signatories, Euripides Stylianides. Dissatisfied with the answer, the other signatory to the question, a member of parliament, stated, Nikitas Kaklamanis noting that “in the essence of the answer, it starts with how they were saved banks from bad loans, while we were asking about the world. We had asked 5 specific questions to which we did not get an answer,” he said.

The signatory MPs, however, as a whole reject the accusations, of “guerrilla”, citing the constitutional role of the MPs and the co-community, to be active and help the government to “become better” as they comment.

In fact, they announce other similar initiatives to control government policy by ND MPs, attempting and contributing, as they say, to “stop the downward trend of their party in the polls” and noting that their actions are aimed at “supporting the government’s effort and not to weaken it” as they emphasize.

The government representative also rejected the complaints about a blue-collar internal party opposition. Pavlos Marinakisattempting to downplay the climate created by the controversial internal party question of the eleven, stating that “some people discovered very late the work that a properly organized parliamentary group does and what is the role of MPs. Parliamentarians have as a basic obligation to ask questions, to direct questions. And, obviously, they ask the relevant Ministers about various important social issues and, accordingly, the Ministers have the obligation to answer”.

He even cited a series of facts and figures from the parliamentary control, exercised by ND MPs during both the previous and the current term of government of the party, announcing that “in the first four years we had 8,045 and in this one year or so of the second four years 1,236 , that is, almost 10,000 interventions, mainly through questions, have been made by ND MPs”.

As far as the “human geography” of the controversial parliamentary initiative of the blue MPs is concerned, it reveals their common belief that the compass of his party should point a little more to the right, returning closer to the traditional roots of the ND, as described in its founding declaration.

Their critics, on the contrary, group them with the characteristic that the majority of the eleven MPs in question had opposed the same-sex marriage bill and blame them for resentment, because they were not used in the reshuffle after the European elections.