The last fig leaf of the “hyper-partisan” Vangelis Venizelos has fallen.
Written by Ioulia Skourti
The politician who has been trying hard in recent years to convince public opinion that he was always above parties, proved conclusively with his last public interventions that all he was interested in was his succession in the party pen of PASOK. However, he did it so blatantly and crudely that he reminded the PASOK world, and beyond, of the bulimic tendency he displayed at Zappeion in 2007 when he rushed to go and challenge Giorgos Papandreou.
Let’s take things in order. As soon as Venizelos became… a turnoff for his party (ed: Androulakis didn’t include him on the ballot in 2023) he tried to appear “hyper-partisan”. In fact, there were more than a few times when he spoke positively about the government of Kyriakos Mitsotakis, while he was not so critical of the Tsipras period, making many wonder how it is possible that he forgot that the SYRIZANEL government hung him on the pegs with the Novartis scandal.
The presidential dreams
As the time for the election of a new President of the Republic approached, the “hyper-partisan” Vangelis Venizelos made sure to declare himself present. At that time, many analysts and journalists in their reports spoke about the “ardent desire” of the constitutionalist Venizelos to be the one who will succeed Katerina Sakellaropoulou in the Presidential Palace. Indeed, some of them claimed that there had “been” a discussion with the prime minister about the former PASOK minister’s wish.
In the end, it turned out that all these scenarios were unsubstantiated and rather wishful thinking of the near-PSD. It should be noted that he tried a few times to deny – tepidly, it is true – that he had aspirations for the presidency, but he did not convince many people. Once Vangelis Venizelos saw his dreams become a shambles, he decided, as many argue, to return to his… factory settings and go from being an “admirer” of the current government to becoming its diatribe accuser. Using the rule of law as an excuse, he starts “shooting” at the government, while his denunciations, in the blink of an eye, are over-promoted by the well-known oligarchy media. In fact, in the same media he is presented as a “bright omniscient”, although there are many who disagree and argue that Venizelos behaves like an old-style party leader with a rhetoric of “slash and burn”.
Sophistications and dicta
However, lately he has… ended it and with legal sophistries and legal dicta is giving grosso modo “line” to the Supreme Judicial Councilto renew the term of office of the Euro-prosecutors (ed.: these are the prosecutors who are sending the dossier on the OPEKEPE case to the Parliament in instalments) with “irresistible” arguments that only an “all-knowing” person like the former PASOK minister could testify in the public sphere.
Speaking at the Delphi Forum, he first admitted that the tenure of European prosecutors is decided by the Supreme Judicial Council of Greece and not in Brussels, as Kovesi and her supporters think, saying the following: “The truth is that there is no systematic regulation on the issue of the renewal of the term of office, neither in the regulation nor in the law. According to the constitution, any change needs a decision of the Supreme Judicial Council, because the European Public Prosecutors are also national prosecutors.”
But then he began his… Venizelist oracles. Commenting on the criticism – rightly – that the Romanian prosecutor is receiving for her handling of the OPEKEPE file and for her Italian intervention in the country’s judicial system, he said that political terms are being attached to the issue in a “crude” and “aggressive” way, creating the impression that this constitutes interference in their judicial work. “Politically, the government and the majority MPs attacking Ms. Kovesi are creating conditions to make the renewal absolutely mandatory”. That is, according to Venizelos’ legal sophistry, because they are being criticised and because the well-known interlocking media, we would add, are raising dust, the country’s Supreme Judicial Council must decide a priori on the renewal of the Europrosecutors. In conclusion, Venizelos does not need to toil any longer to prove that he is unbiased. He never was and the citizens know that. Also, some people should understand that Greece is not and will not become a “protectorate” of every Kovesi and every interlocking center.
