Main opposition New Democracy (ND) president Kyriakos Mitsotakis took to the airwaves on Saturday morning to charge that his rival, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, has merely tried to extend his political mandate by agreeing to a new round of austerity measures for the average Greek citizen.
Mitsotakis, a former minister whose center-right party is comfortably leading ruling SYRIZA party in all mainstream polls by double-digit percentage points, was referring to looming pension cuts (in 2019) and a lowering of the tax-free annual income threshold (2020), which the Tsipras government acquiesced to last week in order to conclude a second review of the Greek bailout program with creditors.
The pro-reform ND leader again claimed that Tsipras and his leftist-rightist coalition accepted a “fourth memorandum” with commitments after 2018, when the current bailout ends and after scheduled elections are held at some point in 2019.
Mitsotakis appeared on a morning current affairs program broadcast by the Athens-based Skai TV channel.
In continuing to step up his attack on the previously anti-bailout Tsipras and the coalition government, Mitsotakis said “Mr. Tsipras accepted everything (demands by creditors) and received nothing”. He also ridiculed proposed countervailing measures — mostly increased welfare spending — that the current Greek government wants to implement after 2019 — assuming ambitious fiscal targets are achieved on an annual basis. Mitsotakis reiterated his party’s proposal for immediate tax cuts for taxpayers and businesses, in order to take advantage of a primary budget surplus recorded for 2016 – which was higher, by eight times, than the target of 0.5 percent of GDP.
Along those lines, he said any future ND government will demand lower primary budget surplus targets, as a percentage of GDP, from institutional creditors.
Moreover, the pro-market Mitsotakis, repeated his pledge to lower tax rates in recession-battered Greece, while repeating that populism is now retreating across Europe, whether this political phenomenon emanates from the right or the left.
At the same time, he cited what he called “new vested interests” emerging in the country, a reference a controversial Russian-Greek investor Ivan Savvidis, who sharply criticized Mitsotakis and ND days after a northeastern Greece cigarette manufacturer (SEKAP) he owns had 38 million euros worth of fines written off via a Parliament-ratified amendment. The fines were slapped on SEKAP before Savvidis purchased the formerly state-run tobacco cooperative and cigarette maker in 2014.
“He’s (Tsipras) erasing fines for (cigarette) smuggling against a businessman , who subsequently attacks the main opposition leader and backs the prime minister in an interview, saying that he’ll also purchase mass media to back his (Savvidis) interests: that’s the definition of clientelism,” Mitsotakis said.
Finally, he read out an acerbic recent quip by acclaimed Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis, who charged that “when a leftist is transformed into an immoral power-lover, then there are no ethical boundaries (for the latter) to maintain power.”
