Political turmoil has broken out in Greece after media affiliated with main opposition party revealed that Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras spent last summer vacations on a luxury yacht of a Greek shipowner. Tsipras’ vacation in August 2018 took place just weeks after the horrendous wildfire in Mati that took the lives of 100 people and injured two hundreds.
Two pictures of the Prime Minister on board of “Odyssey” yacht were displayed by a journalist of private Skai broadcaster.
The issue has become top theme in the country’s political agenda less than three weeks than the European elections.
According to naftemporitki, the cruise, in the Ionian Sea off western mainland Greece, also reportedly coincided with Tsipras’ high-profile appearance on the isle of Ithaka to declare, live on state television, the end of the memorandum era.
Additionally, much of the political opposition touched on the fact that Tsipras represents Greece’s hard left, which rode to power in January 2015 on a thunderous platform of anti-bailout, anti-austerity and anti-capitalist rhetoric.
Undeterred, Tsipras was scathing of the opposition, especially poll-leading main opposition New Democracy (ND) party and his main political rival, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, during a campaign rally in the northeast Greece city of Xanthi later in the evening, but avoided any mention of the furor. At the rally, he again phrased the dilemma of “people vs. the elite”, charging that his rivals represent the latter and that his party is with the masses.
“We offer him (Tsipras) up for the ridicule of the Greek people,” was the response by ND.
The Greek premier’s week-long family cruise was confirmed Monday afternoon by the vessel’s owner, Katerina Panagopoulou, the widow of late shipowner and businessman Pericles Panagopoulos, the founder of Attica Group and one of the most respected executives in Greece’s high-powered shipping sector for decades.
Panagopoulou, who serves as an unsalaried general secretary for Greek diaspora issues in Tsipras’ office, said her late husband suggested the holiday to Tsipras, whom she said appeared “fatigued” in August 2018.
She also blamed “vested interests” linked with media groups for targeting Tsipras over the specific yacht holiday.
Skai radio host and journalist Aris Portosalte posted two photographs of Tsipras on the 34-meter “Odyssey (London)”, a year after another well-known newspaper columnist more-or-less described the undeclared vacation, sans the photographs.
