By Yannis Anifantis

The party of Harilaou Trikoupis came under the crosshairs of the Minister of Health Adonis Georgiadis, after announcing his stance to vote “present” in the free afternoon surgeries, which will start from November 28 with resources from the Recovery Fund.

“You give me the free afternoon surgeries. It connects with me personally. Anyone who is patient from here on out, must know 2 things: that the ND government passed it and PASOK voted absent. So there is not a single one who owes even a moral gratitude to PASOK”, the Minister emphasized from the Plenary floor, while responding to the opposition’s scathing comments on the Prime Minister’s references to a healthy lifestyle. “With such an opposition do you expect to win the prime ministership? You will wait a millennium,” he added.

However, the PASOK’s amendment to include all health facilities in the heavy and unhealthy categories also aroused interest today, with the Minister of Health accusing Harilaou Trikoupis of misunderstanding on the occasion of Anna Diamantopoulou’s interview on SKAI radio. “Our dispute was simple from the beginning. We were saying that they would leave (7,500 health workers). You said no. The Secretary of Political Planning of PASOK considers around 2,000. Find it among yourselves”, pointed out the Minister, stressing that Ms. Diamantopoulou described an amendment that concerns specific nurses and doctors and not all healthcare workers. “Ms. Diamantopoulou invites us to a political consultation that will only concern some nurses and some doctors and PASOK submits an amendment that will concern all of them. So the Political Planning Secretary said something else in relation to your amendment.”

In fact, Adonis Georgiadis accused PASOK of attempted poaching. “The PASOK of Mr. Androulaki has become a party that cannot take the slightest responsibility and where apparently the former internal party rivals cannot agree on anything, but you have to be serious and responsible to govern Greece. If the amendment was as presented today by Ms. Diamantopoulou it would make sense to discuss it, the amendment you brought is another matter. I fought you for the poaching you want to do,” he added.

However, when asked by the parliamentary editors about the choice of Charilaou Trikoupis to declare “present” in the amendment for the free afternoon surgeries, the rapporteur of PASOK, Yiannis Tsimaris, emphasized:

“We said ‘present’ to the amendment for the payment from the Recovery Fund of the evening surgeries because 35% of the developed operating theaters remain closed. So it adds nothing to the solution of the problem.”