New Democracy's Evangelos Meimarakis launched an attack against Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras as Parliament voted on second raft of reforms.
“We are not in favor of the measures, we do not support Syriza’s government, but we support our homeland and so we vote ‘Yes’ to secure our country’s place in the euro, we vote ‘Yes’ to restore the trust that was lost because of your actions.”
Lawmakers voted 230-63 in favor of the judicial and banking reforms with five abstentions. Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras had to rely on opposition support again as 36 of his allies rejected the measures. But Meimarakis - who is New Democracy's interim leader - was less than fulsome in his support.
As ANA-MPA reports: Meimarakis called the Prime Minister to consider "the cost to the country of the compromise you made while rejecting the agreement you could have had months ago," and criticized him for actions and omissions that brought the deterioration of the economy and the banking system and the breaking of promises to the Greek people, while the risk of a Grexit has not been entirely averted.
"New Democracy agrees with you only in the national interest, we support Greece and our country and vote 'Yes' to keep the country in the eurozone and to reclaim the trust we lost because of you," the New Democracy leader said, calling on the premier to build on the positive achievements of the prior government.
Meimarakis accused the premier's party, Syriza, of "representing the deep state, all those people who do not want entrepreneurship and work to move ahead in this country. You represent statism, imposing taxes on the private sector to sustain a large and anti-productive state," and charged Tsipras with toppling the New Democracy government so the positive policies it introduced would not have time to take hold and therefore lead to losing the next elections.
In his response to the main opposition leader, Tsipras said, "If you had the agreement of the 2 billion (euros), why didn't you take it, to save the country?" In reality, he added, there was no such deal, and the previous government should have implemented both what this government is forced to implement, as well as deep fiscal measures.
There was no chance Greece could exit the crisis with the debt reaching 180% of the GDP, Tsipras said, also criticizing Meimarakis' views as "the extreme neoliberal beliefs that belong to the past." He also called on him to explain how it was possible for a government Meimarakis accused of having indebted the Greek people to such a degree to enjoy the same people's majority support and lead the former government party in double-digit scores on polls.