The Mayor of Kythera, Efstratios Harhalakis, who announced his candidacy for the Municipality of Kythera, cut the cake of the party «New Day». The event took place at the restaurant «Pierros» in Livadi on Saturday 11.02.2023.
Read the text of the Mayor's speech:
Friends,
After almost 3 years of pandemic and restrictions, we are all together again today to exchange wishes for the new year and to set together the goals for 2023, a year of national and local elections.
I want to thank you all for your presence here tonight. A presence that guarantees that the work we started in 2014 will continue in the years to come.
On 1 September 2014, with your support, my colleagues and I were invited to run our Municipality. We received an annual Budget that was totally process-oriented, barely exceeding 6 million euros and aimed at covering only the salaries and basic needs of the Municipality such as electricity and telephone bills. With no funding from national or European programmes such as the MFF and the NSRF. With hard work, constant assertion, dynamic actions and above all by prioritizing the objectives, we managed to finance dozens of projects on both islands, projects that until a few years ago seemed like a dream. Who would have thought that in just a few years, most of them problematic (remember: capital controls, payment default, pandemic), we would have managed to finance, tender and complete projects that had been discussed on the island for years? I mention only a few: waste management, dozens of water supply projects, modern roads, large and small redevelopments, development of municipal properties, completion of the Theatre and Slaughterhouse studies, desalination, etc. And how much more is expected!
This year's budget exceeds 30 million and the total funding of projects since 2014 to date reaches 48 million euros, an unprecedented amount not only for our Municipality, but even for municipalities much larger in population and potential than ours.
I do not intend to bore you with an account of work and actions because that will be done in due course. But I want to commit myself and my colleagues - old and new - to continue to fight every day for even more projects, even more funding, even more development actions. And we will do it without worrying about the next elections, but with our minds on the next generations who will live on an island with a much more modern infrastructure than the one we took over 9 years ago. Because an island that lives from tourism must necessarily have modern infrastructure, otherwise any tourism development is a bubble.
I don't think I need to tell you the obvious. That I will be asking for a renewal of your confidence in me and my team in the next election! In a team that is enriched every day with wonderful new candidates, people well established in various professional fields, but also young fellow citizens who are sincerely concerned about the future of the island and want to contribute to its progress, accepting the Principles of our Party and rejecting old partisanship and intrigues, whatever their facade. The turnout of new candidates is moving and I sincerely thank them. As I thank my colleagues with whom I formed this combination in 2014 and those who joined in 2019 and we all continue together. And of course my special thanks to all the staff of the Municipality because - despite my constant pressure for more and more - they stand with dignity in the face of an absurd bureaucracy and a water-headed State that unfortunately still treats local government as a beggar, despite the positive steps of recent years.
And while I personally declare that I will vigorously defend the work we have done in the Municipality over the last 9 years, asking for the renewal of the popular verdict, I cannot but comment with scepticism and concern on the fact that to date the electorate of our Municipality still does not know whether and what is the counter-proposal to our work, whether and who or who will claim their confidence in just 8 months from today, whether they have and what is ultimately their own narrative towards our existing project, whether this or that person will finally commit to presenting us with their proposal and their cadres. All these unanswered questions need to be answered so that Kytherians and Antikytherians know what they have to judge and who they have to compare. However, as far as I and my own combination are concerned, I am clear: we will defend our work by presenting it in every village, in every community, in every house individually, because we are all extremely proud of this work and the personal work that resulted from it!
With these thoughts I thank you all for your presence tonight and especially for your support which gives me and my colleagues the strength to move forward even further!
Greetings were sent by the Deputy Minister of Shipping Mr. Costas Katsafados, and the Members of Parliament Mr. Noni Dounia, Yannis Melas and Nikos Manolakos, which will be published in the next post.
