The “eight-month complacency” shown by the prime minister and his government over the pandemic constitutes “criminal negligence”, main opposition SYRIZA-Progressive Alliance said in an announcement on Thursday, short after Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis announced a three-week nationwide lockdown starting on Saturday.
“When all the scientists worldwide were talking of a second and harsher wave [of the pandemic], Mr. Mitsotakis’ complacency was no mere oversight. It was criminal negligence,” Greece’s main opposition party said.
SYRIZA also slammed the government for “a lack of self-criticism” and said the prime minister had “wearied the Greek people with his contradictions, narcissism and lack of empathy with the burden that each individual citizen has to carry.”
SYRIZA noted that the prime minister had been “bragging a few months ago that he had permanently beaten the virus, a few days ago that a second lockdown was inconceivable and until a few hours ago that the measures he announced on Saturday would take us up to December. He was proved wrong in all cases.”
“A small dosage of self-criticism would be the least one might expect,” SYRIZA added, especially over the “absence of action to strengthen the national health care system, which is already at its limits. the party also pointed out at the “one million citizens stacked like sardines on public transport means every day.”
Furthermore, the party criticized the government decision to reopen the country to tourism, which it said had led to an increase of cases in August.
The government’s policies “left the country and the national health system defenseless and led to a second lockdown. The fragmentary and deficient support measures for workers and businesses lead to an economic and social collapse after the lockdown,” the SYRIZA announcement said.
Nearly all opposition political parties around the world are taking this line seeking to politicise what is a humanitarian crisis. I personally think that the government have dealt with the situation admirably although I must confess to have some sympathy with this Syrisa stance. Mitsotakis rode on the backs of an outraged population at the last election and has never acknowledged that had it not been for the extremely unpopular decisions that the Syriza government had to make he would have inherited a bankrupt country, locked in its own spiral of corruption and deceit.
HEAR, HEAR!!!
This is a humanitarian CRISIS and the only thing the politicians should do now is to help the people survive in the best way they can. Support the health care, if necessary take loans to support unemployed people. The only thing that will take us through this pandemia is to help oneanother!