The new accusations of the opposition about a cover-up in the Tempi tragedy were answered by Pavlos Marinakis, Pavlos Marinakis, speaking to SKAI on Tuesday morning.

“What society feels is justified. It feels indignation, a rage accumulated over a series of images shown by the Greek state and united in the tragic accident in Tempe, where young children perished. All of us, in addition to whatever status we have, have brothers and sisters, we have children, and we have traveled. We could be on this train so that we don’t forget what we know as well,” he said, separating what society says from what the opposition says and describing the rallies and the demands for justice as perfectly reasonable.

“What is the main category of the Opposition and the Media who want to do opposition? That Mitsotakis is orchestrating the cover-up. Let’s go over three things so that people understand what’s going on. I repeat I am not saying them to justify what happened that day, 57 people were lost so unjustly and the penalties provided by law must be imposed by the Justice, as judged by it and only it”, he stressed and continued:

“What are they urgently demanding from the Opposition? To run faster, that is, to go to trial faster. One who wants to cover up, as they accuse the Prime Minister, what would he do? He would put pressure on the Justice, as the government before us did when we had a Parliamentary Ministry of Justice, and say, “Come on, close the inquest quickly so we can go to trial, celebrate that in a year the inquest is over, run, go to court and so on.” If this illegal anti-institutional and supposedly in our favour because we would have closed the inquest quickly, which is unthinkable, we would not have had the findings of the NPM to answer the explosion. One who wants to cover up would go to a third conclusion. One who wants to cover up would staff the EODSAM with independent experts from abroad?”

“The pre-trial is governed by secrecy which is sacred”

At the same time, Marinakis attacked Syriza, accusing it of communication management “in another human tragedy, at the same time that the prosecutor in Mati came out and said that if there had been 112, people would have been saved,” clarifying that he was not attempting any set-off. “We didn’t even talk about a cover-up at that time,” he said.

“The second charge of cover-up is that we are covering up political figures. I ask you two years later, has the judiciary come across the name of a politician, sent it to Parliament for criminal charges, and has the Parliament or the government covered up anything? No is the answer. If that happens, will we cover up, will we say no? Not, we will tell the judiciary what is provided for. That is, if someone has potential criminal charges or their name is found in the case file, then we will directly facilitate Justice. And thirdly, who voted for provisions to listen to all phone conversations? Who voted to go directly to trial without delay? We did.”
We did.

The government spokesman then reiterated that “what we ought to do is bow the heads of relatives with respect and shame because they just lost children.” Asked whether the systems are currently safe, he replied in the affirmative, except for the Daniel weather piece. “I’m not going to say we did everything perfectly since lives have been lost. But I will say that everything that can be done is done at maximum speed.”

“To understand what a dossier on Tempi is, it is a dossier that has incredible evidence, obviously very shocking with audio documents, testimonies, expert reports, depositions, objections. It’s a huge body of evidence, collected one after another. The pre-trial is governed by secrecy, it is sacred that secrecy.”

Finally, he again accused the Opposition of blatancy, as he said “they are trying to find a lifeline through a tragic accident in one of the blackest pages. “They are trying to build political careers on the backs of hurting people. We will never, despite any mistakes of our party, do what others do, which is to exploit the pain of relatives.”