Motion of distrust-C. Katrougalos: The government is hiding the truth from the Greek people

Speaking during the debate on the motion of censure of SYRIZA-PS, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, George Katrougalos, referred to the need for elections for the emergence of a new progressive government.

He argued that New Democracy had chosen to respond to the reproach addressed to it by society itself for the multiple inability to manage the pandemic, the accuracy and the recent bad weather, on the one hand by the usual shifting of responsibilities and on the other by the argument that under SYRIZA governments , immediately, worse. This is obviously a confession of the inability to defend its actions for their own value, a form of whataboutism, as the Anglo-Saxons say, “and you tortured the Indians.”

Of course, he continued, we are not afraid of comparison at any level. In relation to the pandemic, when ND took over, it found a submitted draft law on Civil Protection and the coordination of all the competent bodies that included the coordination protocols for the whole of Greece. He threw it in the trash to pass another law, the implementation of which was practically suspended in March 2020, leaving households without electricity and excluded even today. Even the airport with Rafale was blocked by snow.

Precisely because the comparison is not in the interest of New Democracy, it resorts to misinformation, to gray propaganda and many times to the naked, pure lie.

To support this claim, he has used examples from the foreign policy sector he has been serving in recent years. It started with the criticism leveled from the floor of Parliament at SYRIZA by the Deputy Foreign Minister, during which the official opposition immediately voted against all major national agreements, such as the expansion of territorial waters, the drawing up of an EEZ with Italy and the supply of Rafal fighters. This is a pure lie, SYRIZA-PS voted for these agreements. Why is the government using such a self-evidently false argument? But precisely because in every case where reality did not correspond to the narrative of its successes, there it resorted to misinformation and gray propaganda. The Oruc Reis “took the wind”), or the nature of the relevant challenges is degraded (our sovereign rights were not violated, because the noise of the engines did not allow the Turkish boat to carry out quality research).

The government was taken by surprise, the Deputy Foreign Minister told us again, when the Americans withdrew their support from EASTMED. And yet, in 2020, under the pressure of the Oruc Reis crisis, he agreed with Egypt on a new alternative route for Israeli gas, without even being clear whether there was an agreement with Cyprus. In October 2021, in the 4th round of the Greek-American strategic dialogue, Greece agreed to conclusions from which – contrary to what happened in all previous rounds – there was no mention of the pipeline.

So the Prime Minister himself gives the direction of this policy, misinformation and fakenews. It’s not important, he said in a recent interview about the Americans emptying EASTMED. He himself had recently slipped into a heavier slide: the famous statement that it does not matter for survival whether one is hospitalized in the ICU or outside, if one knew the Tsiodra-Lytra Report which showed, of course, the complete opposite. This immoral policy of concealing, obscuring or distorting the truth is being pursued in all critical areas. For this reason, the minutes of the Committee of Infectious Diseases were not published. That is why it is not easy to believe that there are no minutes in the recent meetings of the Civil Protection Committee. For much lesser sins, Kurtz’s political career in Austria is over and he’s on the edge of Johnson’s razor in Britain.

So the need for elections and a new progressive government is a matter of political ethics, a rejection of immorality in political life. But also a matter of democracy, to govern the country for the benefit of the many and not the few.