Addressing an enthusiastic rally of supporters in Tripolis on Saturday, Prime Minister Antonis Samaras stressed that the country was finally overcoming the crisis and moving with steady steps into the future, urging them to “put their own signature to the history we are making” by supporting New Democracy and his vision for a ‘New Greece’.
“Today, from Tripolis, we send an advance message of victory to all the country,” he underlined.
In his first pre-election speech for the European elections, from the capital of the Peloponnese, the prime minister aimed harsh criticism at the main opposition SYRIZA party and its leader Alexis Tsipras, saying that the ‘New Greece’ had no room for SYRIZA’s ‘component-factions’, career trade unionists and pampered state-sector unions, nor those that tolerated hood-wearing vandals and undermined reforms.
“They belong to the past, the deep past, the Ice Age. They are forced to talk about tomorrow but they cannot escape from yesterday,” Samaras underlined.
He accused Tsipras of being against investments, such as the plan for the former airport site at Elliniko that could well be the biggest investment in Europe. He also dismissed a comment by the party’s veteran politician Manolis Glezos about “internal borrowing” as a “SYRIZA firecracker” and something that “people luckily don’t take seriously, otherwise there would be damage to the country and a flight of capital abroad”.
“They are doing everything they can to take us back to the crisis, they are seeking instability, because they know that they will disappear along with the crisis, which is now starting to be overcome,” the prime minister said.
“There is a plan for a final exit from the age of the memorandums. We have achieved our targets and we are leading the country to a true rebirth,” he said, to cheers from young people in the audience below.