Main opposition New Democracy (ND) leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis on Friday warned that the situation in the country was “getting worse every day”, speaking at his party’s 10th delegates’ conference and amid still ongoing negotiations between the leftist Greek government and lenders to achieve a first review of the Greek program (third bailout).
Mitsotakis, who assumed the center-right party’s helm in an internal party election earlier in the year on a decidedly reformist plank, again called for snap elections, calling the leftist Tsipras government, which has held power in Greece since January 2015, the “most incompetent, most dangerous government the land has known since the restoration of democracy (1974).”
Looking beyond his main rival, Mitsotakis said his party can lead the country out of the current “asphyxiation and impasse”, as well as away from what he called the “noose” of creditors’ oversight, “to finally take the country’s fate into our own hands”.
Mitsotakis again aimed his criticism at the government by charging that every day that passes is a worse day for the country. “Citizens are being tested, they feel a huge uncertainty; an asphyxiation … the adventurism of the ‘first time Left’ (in government) has taken us back greatly,” he said.
The ND conference is taking place at an exhibition center to the east of Athens, next to the international airport.
