Tsipras: Mitsotakis failed to deliver on promises for lower taxes, many jobs, better salaries

SYRIZA-Progressive Alliance leader Alexis Tsipras held a critical review of New Democracy’s (ND) term on Tuesday, denouncing Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis of for not attending Parliament’s last session before elections to “defend his government’s work.”

He also challenged the prime minister to a televised debate before general elections on May 21.

The main opposition leader tried to deconstruct the commitments and targets of Mitsotakis on “fewer taxes, many investments, many and new job openings, better salaries and higher pensions, and an effective state that will offer citizens security, good health and modern education services, and transparency, accountability, and meritocracy.”

Mitsotakis, he said, lowered taxes “for high-end incomes and large wealth,” while he “depleted the poor and the middle class.” The so-called burst of investments has been postponed again to the next year, while those investments that took place are not productive, and investors such as Public Power Corporation’s ‘golden boys’ made excessive profits while people struggled to pay their bills.

In terms of labor, the middle class is living on coupons for supermarkets, gas, and electricity, and “the only rise pensioners saw by ND is that legislated by SYRIZA,” Tsipras said, while the changes in education, particularly in remote learning, were “a fiasco”. As for safety and security, the main opposition leader said, one could refer to the Tempi train collision and the phonetapping issue as examples.

Tsipras also accused ND of failing to pass adequate legislation to block a neo-Nazi party from gaining seats in Parliament, in “an institutionally amateur way and disdain for parliamentary process,” and termed as hypocrisy the PM’s commitment to “return the Athens and Thessaloniki Water Companies to the state,” since the government has been trying to privatize water for the last four years.

The only way to prevent Mitsotakis from dismantling what he has not done so far is a progressive government, with SYRIZA-PA coming first in the elections, Tsipras said.