In Athens, after three days of debate in the Assembly, the Greek deputies rejected on Sunday January 30 the motion of censure against the government tabled by Syriza, the main opposition party. It is a management considered calamitous of the bad weather last week – snowfalls in particular paralyzed the capital Athens – which is at the origin of this attempt to push the government to resign. The deputies of New Democracy, the conservative party in power, being in the majority in the Greek Parliament, the maneuver had from the start very little chance of succeeding.
With our correspondent in Athens, Joel Bronner
In Greece, the parliamentary debates were symbolized by the verbal confrontation between two Prime Ministers, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, currently in power, and his predecessor, Alexis Tsipraswho attacked the government over its handling of the recent snowfall: “ Where was the state all those hours? You apologized to us, even though we all understood that, for you, it was really everyone else’s fault. The fault of the snow which fell during the day and not at night, the fault of the meteorologists, the fault of the regional governors… In short, the fault of all the others. »
►Also read: Greece: motion of censure against the government after bad weather management
“A Greek specificity”
Kyriakos Mitsotakis, the current Prime Minister, denounced a political approach in this motion of censure: ” It is interesting to note that bad weather is also hitting the United States, Sweden and Denmark these days and that tens of thousands of people find themselves without electricity. However, I have not heard any political party instrumentalize these natural disasters for electoral benefits. It is a Greek specificity. »
In the end, snow had only a small place in the debates of the Greek Assembly. What give above all an impression of dress rehearsal, before the legislative elections scheduled for next year.