Strong attack on Kyriakos Mitsotakis launched by Alexis Tsipras from the floor of the Parliament in the debate on the establishment of a committee of inquiry into the «Pezza lists» and the Opinion Poll requested by SYRIZA - Progressive Alliance.
The President of the SYRIZA accused the Prime Minister that «he made a scheme, giving money to the media to they burn him» and featured «deeply unethical what Kyriakos Mitsotakis did with the money of the Greeks taxpayers».
For «moves for the sake of impressions of a government on the defensive», spoke of Yannis Ragousis in response to the proposal tabled by the parliamentary representative of the Southwestern Democratic Party Harris Theocharis, to start the investigation from 2015. For an attempt to «root out» the essence of the proposal of SYRIZA-PS spoke of the Nikos Voutsis.
The government's attempt to deprive the opposition of its ability to set up committees of inquiry, said Costas Skandalidis from the Movement for Change and added: «Come to the committee to expand the case.» «There is no sense in the counterattack of the Southwest for communication reasons,» noted the Thanasis Paphilis from the KKE. «It is hypocritical to raise this issue now,» said the Costas Chitas from the Hellenic Solution, while the «attempt to disorient» spoke of the Fotini Bakadima from the MP25.
However, all opposition parties noted that the extension of the investigation may be agreed when the selection board is set up.
Γ. Katrougalos: obvious purposefulness of manipulation of media and public opinion
There was an obvious political expediency of strengthening those stations that in the government's mind could be manipulated, the George Katrougalos, who was the first speaker of SYRIZA to take the podium of the plenary session to justify the proposal to set up a committee of inquiry. He spoke of a similar operation of manipulation of public opinion for the second part of the SYRIZA-PS proposal, in relation to the Opinion company.
«There is no precedent in our parliamentary history for the Petsas-Mitsotakis list. They took money from funds that were closed or that do not exist,» he said, noting that in total 239 websites received money when they were not included in the online media register which is set up precisely to be transparent.
«There have been cases of unprecedented blatancy. Funded the site En Blanco, which is a linen shop site, because it was misunderstood as the website of the radio station En Lefko», stressed the MP of SYRIZA-PS and spoke about the funding two pages by Menios Fourthiotis, which «were not even informed» at the same time that, as he said, Serafim Kotrotsos' site was not funded at all.
«A striking case of a similar funding mismatch based on the reach of the instrument is the “Newspaper of the Editors” which received 30,000 for its print version and just 10,000 euros for its website, while another particularly government-friendly newspaper that had a website, the “Liberal”, received 60,000 euros for the newspaper and 120,000 euros for the website,» C. Katrougalos, adding that Phileleftheros was closed after this funding.
The SYRIZA MP stressed that just 1% of funding was given to opposition media and referred to the case of the newspaper Document to point out that Mr. Petsas himself has essentially agreed that the newspaper was not funded for reasons of lineage.
«You have an unwillingness and intolerance to the truth and to real control, you are dangerous in matters of democracy, it is time for you to leave,» he said.
The Southwest will vote against the proposal of SYRIZA «which lacks substance and is just an opposition firework» said the rapporteur of the Southwest Dimitris Kairidis. However, he refrained from mentioning the proposal that the ruling party had announced that it would submit.
The rapporteur of Kinal spoke of «a standing political position of the Movement for Change, to come out all to the light» Vasilis Kegkeroglou. He said he would vote in favour of the SYRIZA proposal. «We would vote for the proposal that was announced by the New Democracy, that it would submit, and we wonder why he did not say anything because he did not submit it in the end, for the expansion of the time period,» he also said and added that Kinal is positive to the expansion of the limits.
All the opposition in favour of the SYRIZA proposal
«Yes.» on the proposal of the opposition made it clear in good time that they would vote KKE, MP25 and Hellenic Solution, while yesterday and the KINAL at a meeting of its Parliamentary Group finalised the positive position it had taken from the outset. Thus, the proposal of SYRIZA-PS is expected to gather 141 votes, while 120 votes are required. It is recalled that SYRIZA-PS has 86 MPs, the Movement of Change 22, the KKE 15, the Hellenic Solution 10 and MP25 8.
It is no coincidence that the discussion of the SYRIZA-PS proposal, after many postponements is done with Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who is located in Paris for the international conference organised by the French Presidency on Libya. In this way, he will not have to respond to the criticism of SYRIZA-PS and the other opposition parties. The government is represented by George Gerapetritis who is on the ministerial benches.
