The Greek parliament rejected on Thursday night a proposal by New Democracy to set up a special parliamentary committee to investigate a possible breach of trust by three SYRIZA ministers in connection with the ongoing investigation into the Novartis case, after it failed to secure the required majority.
The proposal concerned Shipping Minister Panagiotis Kouroumblis (who previously served as health minister) and current Health Minister Andreas Xanthos and Alternate Minister Pavlos Polakis, and their decisions on the pricing of pharmaceutical products.
Apart from ND, the proposal was supported from Golden Dawn, while the votes of the Democratic Coalition and Potami were deemed invalid. The Communist Party and the Centrists Union did not participate in the vote.
It is worth noting, that when the ballot boxes opened and the votes were counted, it turned out that not all of SYRIZA-ANEL coalition lawmakers had voted against the inquiry.
Kouroublis received 151 NO, Xanthos 145 and Polakis 149.
SYRIZA-ANEL has 154 seats in Parliament, one MP was absent and the three ministers were not allowed to vote. Taking into consideration that two of the ministers is not elected MP, the number of NOs for each one of the ministers should have been 152.
It looks as if the coalition MPs got confused during the voting and cast their votes in the wrong ballot boxes with the effect that they were counted as “invalid.”
The ballot boxes had numbers and not the ministers’ names on them,
…. and the some SYRIZA MPs were apparently tired late Thursday night.