Mitsotakis: Tsipras fears elections

Leader of ND says Tsipras should have avoided using personal insinuations against German Finance Minister

Kyriakos Mitsotakis, president of Greece’s major opposition party New Democracy (ND), called on PM Alexis Tsipras to either immediately close the second review on the Greek bailout program or call national elections.

During a briefing of political correspondents, Mr. Mitsotakis warned that the Greek PM would be unforgivable if talks with the country’s creditors went to the wire until July and Greece ran out of money. The leader of ND ruled out any possibility of his party giving the current government a life-line by voting for any measures in parliament.

“New Democracy is ready for elections”, he underlined. New democracy’s president said he would have deliberated with Greece’s partners before taking any actions, adding that he would have allocated the surplus differently from Mr. Tsipras.

On the matter of the recent disagreement between Mr. Tsipras and German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble, Mr. Mitsotakis noted that personal references should be avoided. “I also have differences with Mr. Schauble and disagree with him that we can escape recession via high surpluses, but it is a different thing to disagree and another thing to resort to personal insinuations, like Mr. Tsipras did before retracting it”, Mr. Mitsotakis said.