Main opposition leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis on Friday reiterated, from Parliament’s podium, that his center-right New Democracy (ND) party will completely eliminate the asylum regime currently bestowed on Greek university campuses, saying the latter have been transformed into “asylums for lawlessness and delinquency.”
With a view to next year’s general election and in highlighting poll-leading ND’s “law and order” platform, Mitsotakis spoke at an off-the-agenda Parliament debate he personally requested on conditions at Greece’s public universities.
“What we referred to, in the past, as the ‘university asylum’ has been overtaken by the well-known unknown thugs. It (institution) has become an asylum for lawlessness. The free dissemination of ideas and knowledge is now persecuted in its natural space … from cells of free thinking they (universities) have been transformed into an atypical area of censorship imposed through violence,” the former minister said.
The pro-reform Mitsotakis decried what he called criminal gangs now using university campuses as a base for illegal activities, such as drug peddling and the sidewalk sale of counterfeit and bootleg products, such as handbags, cigarettes and others.
“Who’s side are you on?” Mitsotakis asked Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, who was the recipient of the tabled question in Parliament. “With the professors and the students, or with the gangs and underworld that has infiltrated university grounds?” he added.
In response, Tsipras dismissed charges that crimes and lawlessness have increased during the his leftist-rightist coalition government’s tenure since January 2015, referring to “lies” and “danger-mongering”. Among others, he charged that the main opposition is trying to portray central Athens as “Gotham City”.
He also charged that Mitsotakis has a “deep hate for the public sector and the state university (system).”
In a bid to deflect Mitsotakis’ and ND’s standing demand to revise the constitution and allow the establishment non-state, non-profit universities in the country, Tsipras said there are no well-known private universities in Europe, and that major non-state universities in the United State have opened affiliates in Europe.
At the same time, he praised a recent agreement between Columbia – a world-renowned private Ivy League university in Upper Manhattan – and the Athens polytechnic, his alma mater.
The Greek state has a monopoly on the higher education sector in the country, as per the constitution.
