The country’s entry into an extended pre-election period of polarizing atmosphere and toxicity was marked by yesterday’s pre-order discussion of political leaders in parliament on the issue of surveillance. A debate that, as expected, was tinged with the prime minister’s new “duel” with the leader of the official opposition, which Mr. Al appeared to be aiming for from the start. Tsipras is known to have held the rally at his own request to appear as the main spokesman for the anti-government discourse, as the protagonist of the revealed phone surveillance, President PASOK, as a non-MP, was absent from the plenary session.

Mr. Mitsotakis, after directly accusing the President of SYRIZA of seeking to bring the country into a period of instability, stressed: “I will bear any political costs to bring the country to a stable port.” We will get him through this difficult winter. I won’t run away.” Taking another step, Mr. Mitsotakis threw down the gauntlet to his political opponent with a vote of no confidence: “Now get on stage and throw a vote of no confidence, and let’s all count together. If not, then you are again a brazen politician. I hope you will introduce it and we can move on to a three day debate. You will again find 157 “reinforced concrete” deputies until we go to the next elections,” he said characteristically.

Shortly before this, Mr. Tsipras, having left unanswered this challenge addressed to him by the Prime Minister, once again called on Mr. Mitsotakis to resign and “not to plunge political life into an atmosphere of uncertainty and disorder”, while at the same time he has made clear his intentions for the position he will take in the coming months: “As far as we are concerned, there is no other way than an inexorable institutional struggle to defend democracy,” he said characteristically.

“Your daily connections were 54,000. Have you looked at them one by one and are you sure that not a single MP or journalist is under surveillance?

With regard to the issue of the parliamentary investigation into wiretapping, it should be noted that the ND, PASOK, KKE and MeRA25 agreed to be investigated by the commission of inquiry into the issue of wiretapping of the Communist Party telephone center, which was reported to have begun in 2016, during the government SYRIZA-ANEL. However, Mr Tsipras showed a negative attitude after he generally rejected the prime minister’s proposal for a ten-year investigation.

And although the confrontation continued with great intensity and strong exchanges, Mr. Mitsotakis, responding to Mr. Tsipras’s constant attacks that the ND President knows which politicians the EPM is following, called on the official opposition leader to reassure parliament that he had not listened to any politician, journalist or businessman during his premiership. Mr. Tsipras replied in the negative, with the Prime Minister commenting: “There were about 54,000 contacts made in your days. Did you go through them one by one to make sure that neither the MP nor the journalist was being followed?

Finally, among the noteworthy features of the meeting was the fact that the leader of the official opposition, after a strong protest from Minister of State G. Gerapetritis, reconstructed his original statement that at a recent parliamentary committee meeting, Mr. Gerapetritis had lied about controversial cases.