Elections to signal ‘a great change the country needs’, says Tsipras in Lamia

Greece’s national elections on May 21 “can signal a great change that the country really needs,” said SYRIZA-Progressive Alliance leader Alexis Tsipras on Tuesday.

Discussing politics, economy and current affairs in a fireside chat with Star TV Central Greece CEO Giorgos Simopoulos at the ‘Starforum’ conference in the city of Lamia, Tsipras insisted that Greece needs a radical political change across the spectum.

The maxim “justice for all” is more relevant in the current socio-political predicament than ever before, noted the main opposition party leader, and fits a broad array of issues: “wages, labor rights, education, public health, the State, taxation, banking.”

People’s emotional state has changed after the recent fatal train collision at Tempi, Tsipras pointed out, an incident which seems “to have rendered the average person immune to toxic political monologues,” he emphasized. In this context, what people need to hear the most is of a substantial political program, and real, truthful policies, he stressed.

Addressing the possibility that a single party might not be able to form a government in the first round of elections, he said that “we are not talking about standalone arrogant governments, but the need for a progressive government composed of collaborating parties, and we actually need such a government.”

Tsipras argued that “the country needs a government that will be ‘multi-colored’, in reflection of the multiplicity of the social majority, colorful not only on the basis of the parties comprising it, but also on the basis of the tendencies and influences embedded in our society.”

Talking about the economy, Tsipras said that last year’s inflationary crisis and the ensuing energy price hikes “were indeed imported phenomena,” but the profiteering that followed was ‘made in Greece,’ a domestic phenomenon, mentioning the privatization of the country’s Public Power Corporation (PPC) as one such phenomenon. `