With an eye on preparing the initiatives that PASOK will take from the beginning of the new year, Charilaou Trikoupis is moving forward, estimating that its battle against the government on the budget has achieved its goal.

In the package of initiatives prepared by Nikos Androulakis includes the full staffing of the party’s Sections by selecting the appropriate ones by scanning the CVs already sent by the interested parties on the special platform, as well as the constitution of the steps that PASOK will follow after the announcement of the person that Kyriakos Mitsotakis will propose for the Presidential Palace. The PASOK leader has said that he will support only a choice with a centre-left profile and that he is far from ruling out presenting his own proposal if the prime minister comes up with a person from the centre-right.

Harilaou Trikoupis officials, meanwhile, have expressed their satisfaction with the “image” presented by PASOK during the five-day plenary debate on the 2025 budget. “The fierce Mitsotakis-Androulakis debate on the budget in Parliament highlighted the clear dividing lines between two different government proposals on the economy, the productive model and the way of exercising power. But above all, it demonstrated the parliamentary superiority of PASOK, which for a month and a half has been setting the agenda for the government and the government has been following it,” they said last night, noting that the leader of the parliamentary opposition argued convincingly that the budget “is a budget of Lost Opportunities, Half Truth and No Perspective for the majority of the Greek people”. The same executives also stressed to their interlocutors that PASOK had achieved a parliamentary victory on the issue of banks by stripping the government’s ineptitude bare, as due to the pressure exerted (by the leadership and the Green MPs) Mitsotakis was forced to take initiatives at the drop of a hat.

The PASOK president also emphatically raised – as his close associates underlined – the need for political change in the country, deconstructed the prime minister’s self-identification as a decisive factor for the country’s stability, highlighted the four lines within New Democracy on national issues and “cancelled” the alleged “structural modernisation”, which the New Democracy is falsely evangelising. “The structural reforms that would make Greece strong require vision and strategy, but you choose your government instead of being an island of stability to be an island of settling interests and insecurity for the majority of the Greek people,” Androulakis said, concluding that it is now imperative to change the political direction with a progressive, developmental and socially just plan. It is worth noting that Mr. Androulakis while avoiding to respond to the leader of SYRIZA, Socrates Famellos on the progressive partnerships, addressed an open call to voters of the wider area, the Center and the Center-Left saying that: “I therefore call on every Greek woman and every Greek man who asks for respect from the state, who is hungry for security, hope and perspective to join forces to turn the country around. To open a new road to prosperity, stable prosperity and social justice for all Greeks and especially for the new generation.”

At the finale of the parliamentary procedure, which was completed with the passing of the budget by the government majority and some independent deputies, Androulakis said from the peristyle of the parliament. For two years, Mr Mitsotakis has been playing the role of Pontius Pilate in the face of bank speculation. Today, after two weeks of pressure with continuous proposals, he announced some timid measures. Even so, this is a step. We will continue on this path of productive, meaningful opposition that will lead the government to always be held accountable.”

This morning the president of PASOK-KINAL will speak at the Digital Economy Forum of the SEPE. In the afternoon, he will attend the presentation of the contributory volume “The Theory of Constitutional Practice – Studies in Dialogue with the Work of Evangelos Venizelos” at the National Gallery and shortly afterward he will attend the PASAT event at the Athens Concert Hall for the awards ceremony.