The voting for the Prespes Agreement has been postponed for 2:30 on Friday, Jan 25, Parliament Speaker Nikos Voutsis announced late on Thursday.
The vote was scheduled to take place when the speakers would conclude, that is sometime between Thursday midnight and early Friday morning. However, given the fact that 200 MPs had registered to speak at the plenary debate. The evening, night, dawn and even Friday morning would be therefore much longer than any MP would survive. The decision to postpone the vote for Friday noon was not afar.
Despite the schedule change, the protests against the Prespes Agreement have already commenced outside the Greek Parliament.
Scheduled Protests
- The protest organized by the “Committee for the Greekness of Macedonia” starts at 7:00 p.m. outside the Parliament.
- Left-wing groups meet at 6:30 p.m. at the junction Leoforos Kifisias/Ambelokipoi.
- Communist party KKE meeting is scheduled for 6:00 p.m. at Eleftherias Park at Megaron Mousikis. The KKE plans a march to the US Embassy as it considers that the Prespes Agreement was tailored by Washington.
More than 1,500 police officers have been deployed around the Parliament to secure that lawmakers safely go in and exit the Parliament, without being attacked by protesters.
Metro station <Syntagma> has been closed to public since 4:30 p.m. Metro trains pass through but do not halt. The station will be open to public again when the protest is over – and possibly the MPs have left the center of Athens.
Traffic police has made arrangements and several main roads in downtown Athens will be closed to traffic.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has managed to secure 153 votes as a few independent MPs, some opposition MPs and his ministers belonging in the past to ANEL and ND have declared to support the Agreement. Among them is also Stavros Theodorakis, the leader of To Potami.
