Former Greek Parliament president Zoe Konstantopoulou on Thursday joined critics of Costa-Gavras’ film “Adults in the Room”, based entirely on a best-selling book by ex-finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, in blasting the big screen adaption of the latter’s six-month tenure as the Tsipras’ government’s chief negotiator with institutional creditors.
Konstantopoulou, amongst the most outspoken anti-bailout politicians in the country, sent an “open letter” to the distinguished Greek-French director, charging that his feature film was “one-sided” and that it “completely espouses the version and narrative … of one person (Varoufakis), who played a decisive role in that period (January-July 2015) and who behaved irresponsibly in negotiations; considered them (negotiations) as a personal issue, thus following a personal strategy and tactics.”
She also charged that Varoufakis systematically wrote a scenario aimed at promoting his “self-heroism”, instead of defending the country’s interests, while continuing to avoid giving “serious explanations for many incidents and his actions”.
Varoufakis and Konstantopoulou were both elected to Parliament in January 2015 upon leftist SYRIZA’s landslide election, with the former picked by Alexis Tsipras to head up the finance ministry. The confrontational Konstantopoulou was nominated by the government as the president of Parliament, being elected to the post by a wide margin of deputies.
Varoufakis left SYRIZA after the Tsipras government capitulated to creditors’ demands, voted “no” to the third memorandum, wrote his narrative of the events leading up to the summer of 2015 and, ultimately, established a European-wide political movement (Diem25) that mostly foundered in the May 2019 European Union elections. Nevertheless, his Greek political affiliate, Mera25, squeaked past the 3-percent threshold for Parliament representation in the July 2019 election, returning the maverick economist to the legislature.
Conversely, Konstantinopoulou’s own political formation failed to achieve Parliament representation.
