In the pre-agenda debate in Parliament and in OPEKEPE, New Democracy MP and former minister Makis Voridis told ERTnews.
About the pre-agenda debate in the Parliament, he said, among other things, that: “Indeed, one expected to see from yesterday’s debate whether there is any added value to a choice of topics made by the opposition over the last two years, perhaps even longer.
This was a great public debate. In recent times, especially in the second term, the opposition had chosen to invest in, shall we say, criminal cases. We spent two years discussing the illegal load.
There is no political scandal in the OPEKEPE. I say that because a case came up that involved me. We did an investigation that lasted five months. 75 people were examined in this inquiry, documents were produced, 20,000 pages. If something cannot be stated in a clear and clear way after 75 witnesses, excuse me, there is no case.
The first case had no financial loss, no numbers, in the second, we now have access to the material and we find that the illegal and the crime of instigation in which has been committed on the part of the New Democracy MPs I say case so is that an email with a forwarding letter was sent from the office of Mitarakis.
So a citizen comes in, sends me an email, says their complaint about an issue. And I read it without even any prompting, ‘Do this, do that, do this, do that,’ I forward it to the minister’s office for them to look at.”
At another point in his remarks, he said: “We go to Mr Livanos, so 30 organic farmers come to him, who have received aid the year before last year, last year they received aid. So people go and say, you know, this year we missed the deadline for our application. Why did you guys miss it? The joint planner that we had got sick, got cancer and we didn’t get it done.
The member raises the issue, as the citizens, the producers raised it to him, and he says this happened, can we do something? It suggests the solution of a chain of command appeal. We missed the deadline for reasons of force majeure, because our scholar could not do it and the minister who has the discretionary power to accept it.
Despite the fact that the tone at times was, let me say, extremely high, there were periods in the past when we were discussing in the House and policy issues, tax policy issues, fiscal policy issues, what measures we should take, what measures we should not take.
Question, in exercising his discretion the minister given by law to solve such a real problem was neither fake subsidies nor fake growers. They missed a deadline to solve a real problem. That’s felonious disloyalty. Really now.”
Talking about the waiver of immunity for MPs, he commented that: “Parliament deals with criminal cases, so it has criminal jurisdiction. Having seen in detail the files from the transmittal that has come to us from the prosecution, I say that these are not files that bear criminal assessment.
The political issue the truth is that I see it. Because these are people who have a political status. These are people who are running for office in their counties tomorrow. These are people who have a public record. It says to you I want to go and be judged by the court.
It is not possible to criminalize the relationship between a citizen and his MP and therefore there is no question of lifting immunity in these matters. The onus of legality lies on the administration, the administration has the responsibility of upholding legality.
The second solution, which is also simple and clear, is to say we do not want any contact of MPs with the civil service. MPs please in their duties and what does it mean in their duties? He/she speaks in Parliament, does legislative work and drafting of bills, does parliamentary scrutiny. Period.”
Finally, Voridis said: “There has been an investment on the part of the opposition; it has nothing to say about geopolitics, it has nothing to say about immigration, it has nothing to say about economics, it has nothing to say about fiscal, it has nothing to say about the constitutional review and the issues it has opened up.”
