Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras on Wednesday again forecast that the recession-plagued country was “one step from the crisis’ exit”, in statements during an off-the-agenda debate in Parliament over public safety, a session convened at the request of main opposition New Democracy party and amid the ongoing refugee / migrant crisis in the country.
Tsipras spoke a day after his government unveiled a pair of draft bills entailing another round of tax increases, direct and indirect, as well as social security cuts in order to meet institutional creditors’ demands for primary budget surpluses, in relation to GDP, by 2018.
The leftist Greek premier said his government’s insistence that the country is on a road to economic recovery will be proven by this week’s Eurostat figures.
He also accused center-right New Democracy of trying to confuse the refugee crisis with public safety in the country, in a bid to “shift the political agenda to the far-right political spectrum.”
“The allegation that connects the refugee crisis with terrorism is a well-known narrative of the most reactionary and intolerant parties of Europe… It is the position of those who close their borders, raise walls and blame peoples based on religion and origin,” he said.
In reply, ND leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis said his party and people will not tolerate a lawless country.
“For some (ruling party) SYRIZA cadres the terms public order, safety and police are words that are practically forbidden; they are words that cause an allergy … Some people termed gatherings of 50 people that closed down central Athens as protests; others called attacks freedom,” he said, referring to street raids by self-styled anarchists operating from the Athens district Exarchia, known as a counter-culture “hub”.
“A citizen’s freedom ends where the freedom of another citizen begins; and public safety is a central axis of the state’s function, and isn’t given away,” Mitsotakis said.
