Evangelos Venizelos, in his extensive Monday night (3/4) TV interview on MEGA, commented on scenarios that show him as a candidate for prime minister and made it clear that he would not be a candidate for prime minister.

“I demand the right to vote for the Greek people? If I wanted to run for prime minister, I would jeopardize the course of the country when the country had one foot in a hole and the other on a rock.” The former PASOK president characteristically said that “they have to be very careful about saying ridiculous things about me being a representative without being a candidate, not wanting to be, not having a program, not having the ambition to run. If I am going to apply for such a role, I will apply for it directly, not through proxies, not on the sidelines, not in the background.

Evangelos Venizelos, when asked about the proposal by Nikos Androulakis (“neither Mitsotakis nor Tsipras”), called it “logical and institutional”, pointing out that the political leaders of the three parties act as prime ministers. He accused the government of circumventing the Constitution with its attitude when it says that “it will return the investigative mandate, and with too much impudence says that it will immediately go to the second election, as well as to the third and fourth.”

Among other things, he noted as positive achievements of the Mitsotaka government the treatment of the pandemic, migration flows and in relation to the so-called “deep state”, he emphasized that “the government’s job is to fight the phenomena of the deep state.”

Mr. Venizelos also argued that cooperative governments were introduced into the country’s political course in 1989 by Konstantinos Mitsotakis, and stressed that, based on the experience of the Samaras-Venizelos government, they are more effective than several independent one-party governments.

In fact, he referred to the heavy losses of PASOK, stating that this was also largely due to the split that arose in 14-15 with the removal of George Papandreou and the creation of KIDISO. However, the former PASOK president emphasized that the Papandreou administration should also be remembered for the commitment it made in the face of the country’s bankruptcy and should be protected throughout the 2010-2015 period.

With regard to the Tempe accident, Mr. Venizelos stressed that it created a split in relations with the younger generation, and the accident most vividly symbolizes this split. “We have to listen to the youth,” he said, stressing that it is very difficult to vote for seventeen-year-olds who seem angry and may vote in a “punitive” manner. However, according to him, it was this gap, as well as the accident in Tempe, that created the conditions for everyone to realize the importance of voting and participating in elections. “I expect that we will have an active participation of young citizens in the electoral process,” he said characteristically.

Speaking on behalf of Kasidiaris’s party, Mr. Venizelos wanted to make it clear that he supported the recent ruling voted by Parliament, stressing that at this stage it is in the hands of the judiciary, in particular the Supreme Court. Speaking about the legal “gimmick” with former Supreme Court Deputy Prosecutor Anastasios Kanellopoulos, Mr. Venizelos spoke of an attempt to circumvent the law, a lateral violation that the Supreme Court must diagnose. According to him, this development does not surprise him, knowing the face of Mr. Kanellopoulos and the personal ambitions he has shown in the past.

Source: RES