In his statement, Mr. Skourletis is turning against the outgoing Home Secretary, Takis Theodorikakou, accusing it of never having signed a loan agreement with European Investment Bank, with the result that there is no ceiling on the proposals for the municipalities, which now have a mismatch in the amounts they claim.
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Very quickly the lies of the former Minister of Interior Mr. Theodorikakos about the flagship and innovative programme were revealed «PhiloDimos», which he was quick to deconstruct from the beginning of his term of office serving exclusively petty partisan and clientelistic tactics.
And its refutation comes from the government itself and the revelations of the Secretary General of the Ministry of Interior, Mr. Stavrianoudakis, at the Board of the KEDE: a new loan agreement with the European Investment Bank (EIB) has not been signed. The absence of a cap (unlike Philodemos) on new invitations has resulted in a mismatch of proposals, with over 30 municipalities claiming between €25-55 million, around 280 municipalities having submitted proposals ranging from €55 million to €800,000, while 60 municipalities have not yet submitted a proposal. Of course, all the above figures mainly concern the Philodemos programme, as only 17 proposals of €30 million have been included in the new programme.
All this forced the now responsible An. Minister Mr. Petsa to talk about «shortcomings that need to be corrected immediately».
Now the former Minister himself finally admits publicly that he never signed a new financing agreement with the EIB. And this apparently explains his attitude of deafening silence when he was twice asked in Parliament to produce the new contract. Total disdain for the institution of parliamentary scrutiny.
Mr Theodorikakos received a valuable «dowry» by taking over the Ministry of Interior. An emblematic, innovative, fair and transparent programme created for the first time for local government by the government SYRIZA: «Philodemus». A programme that was embraced by the Local Government and provided solutions to chronic problems and needs. A programme that financed vital projects through an innovative financial instrument, combining resources from the Public Investment Programme and the European Investment Bank, with zero burden on municipal budgets.
And what did he do?;
Everything he could to deconstruct it, with old-party tactical Goebbels methods. He changed his name so as not to be associated with the SYRIZA government.
It set up an Evaluation Committee with private experts, with specialties and scientific fields unrelated to project evaluation, in order to create clientelism on the backs of local government.
Lies, however, unfortunately for Mr Theodoricakos, have «short legs».
At the very least, Mr Theodorikakos owes a public apology to the local government, for its mockery and to the Ministers against whom it hurled shameless lies and smears.
The Prime Minister himself owes a public apology since at the fiesta for the presentation of the new programme, which would be «a programme with the virtues of the politician from whom it is named», he spoke of guaranteed resources and «indifference and negligence of the previous government».
We remain faithful to our priorities, one of which is the substantial support and strengthening of local government, as well as to what we have stated from the beginning as the opposition. We will not be drawn into old party tactics. We will closely monitor the actions of the new state leadership of the Ministry of State, which we call on to find a solution soon in order to ensure that the projects of the local authorities are implemented without any problems. And we hope that we will not see any logics of horizontal cuts in the projects being implemented by PhiloDimos.
