Speaking from the floor of Parliament, the leader of the official opposition, Alexis Tsipras, he pointed out that he did not come to Parliament to ask the prime minister questions, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, but to condemn him, while expressing his solidarity with the victims of police violence as well as with the police officer from the DRASI unit who was injured in an attack by hooligans.
«I accuse you of, at the most critical moment of pandemic »You are trying to shirk your responsibilities by stoking tension and division,« Mr. Tsipras emphasized, adding that “not only have you failed catastrophically in managing the pandemic—even today, as we count thousands of deaths and cases, with our fellow citizens in ICUs—, »You are ignoring reality and exploiting the pandemic to impose strict measures and anti-people reforms.".
Mr. Tsipras then said: «I therefore accuse you of deliberately creating the conditions of a police state. And this has been revealed step by step. Back in October 2019, the police stormed into movie theaters to drag young people out because they were watching the movie *Joker*, you turned Nea Smyrni into… Gotham City. When, in December 2019, rampaging men from DRASI stormed into Dimitris Indares’s home, tied him up behind his back, put a hood over his head, and tortured him. When, last February, riot police on Chios smashed cars and hurled insults at residents, calling them “Turkish scum.”.
When, in October, beat and arrested students in Marousi, whom they held for four days at the Athens Police Headquarters as if they were common criminals. When, in June, during a rally in Volos, 27-year-old Vasilis Maggos was beaten by officers from the MAT and OPKE and died a month later. When, in May, the police attacked, without provocation, young men and women who were simply sitting in the squares in Agia Paraskevi, Kypseli, Kallithea, and the Upper Town of Thessaloniki; when riot police officers, in November, sprayed a five-year-old child and his mother during a raid on a café in Galatsi.
»When the riot police attacked, without provocation, the thousands of people who were celebrating a major democratic victory for our society—the conviction of the neo-Nazis of Golden Dawn.".
According to him, Mr. Mitsotakis is undermining the public’s trust in scientists, while hiding behind his own negligence and incompetence.
«Faced with the dead ends caused by your policies, you react erratically and dangerously, resorting to repression to impose lies instead of the truth, deception instead of dialogue, and ultimately division instead of social cohesion and peace,» emphasized Alexis Tsipras, reiterating that the government is banking on escalation and division.
He also spoke about the prime minister's divisive address and the targeting and slander of his political opponents.
«You’re testing the patience of thousands of our fellow citizens, and you don’t realize that the real enemy is in the ICUs, but also in the retail sector, where thousands of citizens are worried about whether they’ll have an income.”. The people who came to Nea Smyrni are the same people who voted for you. »You can’t do this anymore. You’ve failed both in handling the pandemic and the economy, and you’ve pitted half of society against the other half. This won’t fly,” Alexis Tsipras emphasized.
