Main opposition New Democracy (ND) party leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis on Thursday said his party will table a question in Parliament towards Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras himself demanding answers over a recent spate of urban lawlessness in the greater Athens area.
The tabled question will be forwarded for debate in Parliament on Friday, according to reports.
Mitsotakis said he’ll ask “why he (Tsipras) doesn’t let police do their job”, less than a day after up to a dozen masked assailants attacked a police precinct in northern Athens (Pefki) with firebombs.
That incident comes a day after a notorious self-proclaimed anarchist group, called “Rouvikonas” (Rubicon), posted a video of its members invading a hospital administrator and surgeon’s office in a major Athens hospital and threatening to beat him or cut off his hand. The masked vigilantes claimed he requested an illegal payment from a patient – a form of corruption known in Greece as “fakelaki” (envelope), meaning a bribe or cash payment to a state-affiliated official to get a task performed.
In an even more bizarre incident, another group of self-professed anarchists trashed a butcher shop near the inner city Exarchia district to protest what they called the slaughter of animals, warning that they will continue to target butcher shops, stockbreeding units and pet shops.
The same district, Exarchia, which is located around a square by the same name close to the Athens polytechnic and other universities, has witnessed an uptick in late-night rioting by groups of masked individuals, mostly teenagers or young men.
