The “leftist memorandum” and the explosive migration crisis inundating Greece’s eastern Aegean islands will reportedly claim another two “victims” ahead of the snap election expected next month: Alternate Migration Minister Tasia Christodoulopoulou and her husband, Alternate Shipping Minister Thodoris Dritsas.
The first of the duo, Christodoulopoulou, who serves as an unelected member of Cabinet, has been a “lightning rod” for criticism of the radical leftist government’s handling of the migration crisis.
A perceived “looser” border control regime on the country’s frontiers after SYRIZA’s election and the ongoing warfare in the Middle East generated an avalanche of third country nationals being smuggled into or themselves sneaking onto Greek territory from neighboring Turkey over the past few months. After the crisis became severe, with thousands of third country nationals — irregular migrants or real refugees — arriving in Greece, Christodoulopoulou uttered the now infamous phrase of “migrants simply sunning themselves” in central Athens, followed by the one about migrants “disappearing” once they made it into Greece.
Dritsas, a 68-year-old veteran of Piraeus politics, assumed the shipping portfolio in a government that eagerly promised to abolish a tender for the privatization of the port of Piraeus, something that it was forced to take back with the signing of the third memorandum bailout with creditors.
Meanwhile, while the newly emerged “civil war” continues between SYRIZA and its far-left off-shoot, the Popular Unity party, more than 9,000 Syrian nationals have been transported to the greater Athens area in the past five days.
On the migrant-swamped island of Lesvos (Lesbos), another 9,500 third country nationals, who arrived on the island illegally (i.e. not … tourists), remained there, comprised of various nationalities, but most declaring themselves as Syrians.
In fact, Amnesty International estimates that more than 33,000 third country nationals — it refers to migrants — have reached Lesvos in August 2015 alone.