Alexis Tsipras’ main pre-election address began just after 7 p.m. in central Athens’ Omonia square before several thousand supporters and with respesentatives of the French Communist party and Spain’s Podemos on hand to show their support for the leftist frontrunner.
“Beginning on Monday there will be no more partying at our expense… the country will return to legitimacy… there will be no more corruption,” Tsipras promised from the grandstand.
The SYRIZA leader also launched an expected attack against government, stressing that commencing on Monday “there will be no more governing the country via e-mail.”
Furthermore, he repeated the slogan – “No home in the hands of banks” – to emphasize his party’s opposition to bank foreclosures, while he pledge to lower the tax-free rate to 12,000 euro of annual income, to repeal an unpopular property tax and to replace it with a tax on large real estate holdings.
Tsipras also told supporters that a SYRIZA government will conduct a thorough investigatin of the names on the so-called “Lagarde list” of Greek depositors in a major Swiss bank branch.
“Give SYRIZA and Greece a single-party majority – a first chance for SYRIZA and maybe the last one of our country. We will not accept any representatives of Merkel’s views,” he said, adding that his government will also bring up the subject of WWII war reparations with Berlin.
“Our country is in your hands, our future is in your hands … freedom requires virtue and courage,” he said, concluding: “Just a little bit more, to get a bit higher.”
