SYRIZA bears a major responsibility for believing that its divisive policy can give it votes. The whole story of Memorandum – Antimemorandum is about to end, because SYRIZA will eventually be forced to sign the Memorandum. The government has now changed its rhetoric and now uses the terms “we” and the “foreigners”. This is a dangerous divisive policy deriving from the past. Noone is “less Greek” than anyone else,” stated the leader of Potami.
Stavros Thedorakis appeared on the TV show “Proini Enimerosi Alpha” and answered the questions of Spiros Charitatos, host of the TV show.
Below, are excerpts of the interview:
- The political party system bears responsibility for what we are experiencing. In Greece, we apparently have a regime called “political party democracy”. We are trying to discover democracy in a different way, in the political party system.
- The behavior that Potami has been showing is a patriotic behavior. On one hand, we definitely disagree with many things that SYRIZA has been doing. On the other hand, we feel the need to support the Prime Minister, in his last attempt for negotiations. This does not mean that we agree with the way in which he negotiated. Actually he made mistakes and it took him too much time. There must have been a deal much earlier. The society is drowning in uncertainty and the economy is collapsing. In order to lift Mr Tsipras’ hesitation on the deal, we said that we support his effort, if he brings a deal promoting the country’s European perspective. We will support such a deal.
- For us, in Potami, there are red lines imposed by society, not red lines imposed by political parties. The weakest social categories have paid the price of the Memorandum. Vulnerable social groups, like unemployed people or single mothers, have been left out of society. They are the ones who need to be protected. We have clear proposals and solutions. For example, as far as pensions are concerned: We say that we are not planning on cutting down minimum pensions, but take some measures for the high ones. The government could have cut down high pensions and taken measures to regulate early retirement. In a country where the social insurance system has so serious issues, we cannot be applying early retirement schemes, entitling people to retire at their 45. In a country that is suffering, there should be a fair distribution, so that the deprived ones are not deprived even more.
- Alexis Tsipras adopted the same policy with George Papandreou and Antonis Samaras. While there are ways to cut down expenditures, the Prime Minister resorts to the easy solution of further taxes. They say that they will raise the insurance contribution of workers. Do they really think that this a fair solution? They want to reheat the economy and they will raise insurance contributions. The government resorts to the same old policies.
- SYRIZA bears a major responsibility for believing that its divisive policy can give it votes. The whole story of Memorandum – Antimemorandum is about to end, because SYRIZA will eventually be forced to sign the Memorandum. The government has now changed its rhetoric and now uses the terms “we” and the “foreigners”. This is a dangerous divisive policy deriving from the past. Noone is “less Greek” than anyone else.
- Our vision in Potami is to help Greece, proposing solutions, so that there can be growth and social justice.
22 June 2015
Photo credit: Theodore Manolopoulos
