Labor Minister Panagiotis Skourletis, the outgoing minister of Labor and Social Solidarity, gave up his ministry to George Katrougalos before taking over as the “five-year-plan”-sounding Productive Reconstruction, Environment and Energy ministry.

He takes over from Panagiotis Lafazanis who heads the far-left Left Platform, the unofficial internal opposition within ruling SYRIZA and one of a handful of top “dissenters” in the current coalition.

Skourletis gave an overview of the last six months.

“During six months, from the position of the political leadership concerning our ministry, we were able to come into contact with five years of barbaric policies,” he said, in a slightly … exaggerated tone. “Every day we met with people in crisis, unpaid for months, with frustration. We shared their agony and tried to stand by them and take small steps of which some had results.”

Skourletis was referring to the battered private sector in Greece, in this case.

Despite the difficulty, there were some achievements, as he opined. “The first law of the government was one of this ministry,” he pointed out. “It was the law on the humanitarian crisis.”

“My ‘no’ in no way cancels my support for the government as far as the application of commitments it has made concerning the program are concerned. I will battle so that the government’s fall is brief,” he said on Monday, welcoming his successor Katrougalos and Independent Greeks (ANEL) Petros Haikalis, a comedian and TV sitcom performer before turning into a politician and now a deputy minister… of social insurances.