SYRIZA insists on responding against Evangelos Venizelos’ initial attack on Alexis Tsipras, who defied the latter’s demands for early elections, by invoking the declarations that PASOK’s leadership had made in 2009, when it won EU elections and then raised the issue of early elections.

The first move that SYRIZA made was that it published statements made by Mr. Venizelos, who, after 2009’s EU elections and PASOK’s victory had stated that “the matter of elections is de facto arising”, and talked about a “disharmony between formal parliamentary majority of the New Democracy and power relationships in the electorate body”.

“It was disharmony, back then, now they say it is an institutional drift, stated SYRIZA, even posting a relevant video on its website. It put up headlines of newspapers of the time which depicted the issue of national elections being raised after the outcome of European elections”.

PASOK: Most of Parliament and the people do not want national elections

PASOK’s press office retorted to attack the opposition, commenting that “SYRIZA, trying in vain to justify the fiasco of its blackmailing attempt to implicate the President in Mr. Tsipras’ plans for early elections, continues to fall into repeated blunders”.

It urges, Mr. Tsipras, that if he wants elections, he can feel free to table a motion of censure against the government.

Attempting to capture the major trends in today’s political scene compared to 2009, PASOK states:

1- PASOK had achieved 36.7% in EU elections and not 26.5% like SYRIZA did now.
2- The government then only had a One-Seat parliamentary majority
3-Now about 190 MPs (ND, PASOK, DIMAR, Independent Greeks) do not want elections.
4- Now, the parties that were voted in elections last Sunday and collected more than 50% do not want elections (ND, ELIA, POTAMI, KKE, DIMAR, LAOS etc). Only SYRIZA, conspiracy fools and the fascists of the Golden Dawn want elections”.

SYRIZA to Venizelos: “Get well soon, you are a verbose claptrap”

In response, SYRIZA’s press office notes that “instead of a modest self-criticism for the fact that he spoke of disharmony in 2009 and he says otherwise now, Mr. Venizelos is now adopting the method of political alchemy. His opportunism, political unreliability and claptrap verbosity are his permanent characteristics. His self-absorbed nature makes him think his party expresses 50% of the electorate. Get well soon”.