At yesterday’s “morning coffee” meeting at the Maximos Mansion, Kyriakos Mitsotakis gave explicit instructions to his aides: to respond in a tough tone to former Deputy Prime Minister and PASOK leader Evangelos Venizelos, who for days has been launching attacks against the government in the context of the Constitutional Revision.

Mr. Venizelos accused the Maximos Mansion of “constitutional populism” and wrote on Sunday in Kathimerini that “the conditions for revisionary consensus do not exist, because they were destroyed by years of arrogant behavior that systematically violated fundamental rights.” At the same time, he criticized the Maximos Mansion over the way Article 86 was used in the OPEKEPE and Tempi cases, attributing to the government a hypocritical stance on revision after having provided a “protective shield” to government officials at the parliamentary level in those cases.

The constitutional competence and legal experience of Evangelos Venizelos are not disputed. The government, however, chose to respond harshly on a political level, through the government spokesperson. “I find it somewhat oxymoronic, to put it politely, that the architect of ‘immediately,’ of the preliminary examination, and the one who introduced the statute of limitations into the Constitution, is accusing a government led by someone who since 2006 has been calling for a change to Article 86. And during his tenure, the statute of limitations was abolished, so that no one could get away with it and so that we would all—whether we have served or not—ministers and deputy ministers—be subject to the same limitation period,” stressed Mr. Marinakis. He also recalled that in 2006, when Kyriakos Mitsotakis was still an MP, he began collecting signatures from MPs for the revision of Article 86, but managed to gather only 8 signatures instead of the 50 required to initiate the process.

The second round

Anyone who knows even a little about Evangelos Venizelos knew it was a given that he would not let these attacks go unanswered. Shortly before the start of the Circle of Ideas event on constitutional revision at a central Athens hotel, Mr. Venizelos made clear his irritation at the government’s attacks and responded in very strong terms.

“The government told us today that after covering up the responsibilities of its ministers in the OPEKEPE and Tempi cases, by circumventing Article 86, it is now ready to shape a perfect provision of Article 86 that it will not be able to violate or circumvent,” said the former Deputy Prime Minister, at the same time accusing New Democracy of having had the opportunity, during the 2019 revision and with a ‘fresh’ popular mandate, to proceed with a more courageous revision of the article.

“It is therefore as if a murderer were to say that he was led to murder because the Code of Criminal Procedure is not sufficiently strict and, instead of taking responsibility for it, says that it is the fault of the 2001 wording that I drafted,” added Mr. Venizelos, using a rather harsh analogy, while stressing that at the time leading figures and, in general, MPs of New Democracy had cooperated in voting through the provision.

Government officials contacted by protothema.gr for a comment on Venizelos’ new attacks emphasized that “he did not respond to the substance of the criticism, and therefore his response confirms what the government spokesperson said at the briefing.”

It should be noted that yesterday’s panel with Mr. Venizelos included Evripidis Stylianidis, who will be New Democracy’s rapporteur on the revision. “Previous revisions must be instructive so that we do not drift into constitutional populism,” said Mr. Stylianidis, stressing that the revision of Article 86 must strike a balance between absolute impunity for politicians and the risk of criminalizing political life.

The clash over the day after

It is obvious that the government–Venizelos clash carries an “aura” of what is to come, as many in the government attribute to Mr. Venizelos a peculiar role as a “political patron” of PASOK leader Nikos Androulakis, at a time when the Maximos Mansion is posing dilemmas to Harilaou Trikoupis Street and opening the discussion about the post-election landscape. Notably, Nikos Androulakis was seated in the front row at yesterday’s Venizelos event.

In this context, the questions posed by Adonis Georgiadis (SKAI) to Mr. Venizelos were by no means coincidental, prompted by a question Venizelos had raised in a recent interview (Newsbomb) as to whether New Democracy can rule out post-election cooperation with Kyriakos Velopoulos or Afroditi Latinopoulou. “I am sending a message to Vangelis Venizelos: Mr. President, respected sir, Mitsotakis will not form a government with Velopoulos or Latinopoulou—go to your friend Androulakis and tell us what you will do,” said the Minister of Health and Vice President of New Democracy, shifting the dilemma to the PASOK camp.