“I heard you spoke, in a civilized manner, with the murderer of my father!” was how the office-holder son of an assassinated politician addressed a leftist SYRIZA MP this week in his office.
The son in question is Costas Bakoyannis, the son of Pavlos Bakoyannis, who was gunned down in broad daylight in 1989 by “November 17” urban terrorists in central Athens after exiting an apartment building.
The deputy to whom he directed the acerbic statement to was Vasso Leva, who last month visited convicted terrorist Dimitris Koufodinas in a Lamia hospital to “brief” him on the government’s legislative initiatives concerning … prison reform, amongst others.
Koufodinas, considered an “arch-assassin” and unrepentant member of the once elusive ultra-leftist terror gang, is on a hunger strike to demand that maximum security prisons are scrapped in Greece and that another jailed “comrade” be released due to bomb-related health reasons.
“He (Koufodinas) didn’t show any civility, however, when he was killing his victims … As regional governor I welcome you to my office in the regional headquarters, but as a person I stop here. We are all judged in a democracy…” was the way Bakoyannis greeted Leva, who was part a delegation of MPs accompanying minister Yannis Panousis, who holds the public order portfolio.
The “greeting” by Bakoyannis, the elected regional governor of central Greece, caused Leva to head for the door without a second thought – which she reportedly slammed on the way out. Leva is elected from the Lamia area.
Bakoyannis is also the son of former foreign minister Dora Bakoyanni, herself a top conservative deputy for decades.
He later emphasized his point to the minister and the remaining SYRIZA MPs, stressing that “it’s not proper for Parliament deputies to fraternize with terrorists.”
In a bid to try and utter a response, another SYRIZA MP, Vassilis Kyriakakis, asked Bakoyannis why he was criticizing the government instead of discussing his region’s problems.
“There’s no censorship in democracies. And of course, I am discussing issues which affect all of us and the region, such as the prison in Domokos,” he said, pointing directly to the SYRIZA government’s intent to eliminate maximum security prisons.
