S. Famellos: Greece should have been much more active in matters of peace and protection of civilians

Interview of the President of the Parliamentary Group of SYRIZA-PS on the radio station “Flash FM” in Thessaloniki

“Greece should have been much more active in matters of peace and protection of civilians and not take a single-minded stance on the developments in Gaza. And for this reason we have harshly criticized the Mitsotakis government”, pointed out the President of the SYRIZA-PS Parliamentary Group, Sokratis Famellos, in an interview with the radio station “Flash FM” in Thessaloniki and the journalist V. Stolakis.

“Many of the initiatives undertaken today for humanitarian reasons, such as that of President Macron, come with a long delay, when there are already thousands of dead, the majority of them children. And at the international level, it turns out that the issue of peace has been forgotten or underestimated. As citizens and as politicians, we must take substantial initiatives to defend life and do things much more important than simple political positions in international forums or in Parliament,” he noted.

He also pointed out that SYRIZA-PS has already criticized the initial, single-minded strategy of the Mitsotakis government, which abstained from the UN vote on a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza, but also the fact that Mr Mitsotakis rushed to meet the Prime Minister of Israel , Mr. Netanyahu, but not the President of the Palestinian Authority, Mr. Abbas. “Today, with our participation in public organizations such as the UN, the Council of Europe, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, we must support and push for peace initiatives on all fronts: in Gaza, in Ukraine, in Nagorno-Karabakh, and not just to make nice positions in organ meetings when thousands of lives are being lost.”

Commenting on the decline of SYRIZA-PS in the recent polls, he emphasized that the important issue in SYRIZA-PS is not the polls, but the great anxiety and concern about the future of SYRIZA-PS, and the inward-looking debate, often with toxic characteristics , regarding the party: “We are not waiting for the polls to determine the problem we are facing. The discussion about our party in the Central Committee and in all subsequent meetings of the bodies should be done in political terms, to help produce a political result and to find the political basis that unites the most and more. The discussion that takes place in SYRIZA-PS and on the left must be a political discussion that interests the world, so that politics can regain the value it has been losing all this time.”

Asked to comment on the imminent start of work on the flyover in Thessaloniki, S. Famellos harshly criticized the Mitsotakis government for carelessness, violation of scientific and institutional rules with particularly negative effects on Thessaloniki and its citizens: “This is a project that was started by announcement by Mr. Mitsotakis, in September 2019, without any political and scientific planning, without environmental licensing and without being included in the priorities of the Infrastructure Plan of Thessaloniki. There were serious mistakes both in terms of the study preparation of the project itself, as well as in the management of its effects during the construction period. And it is obvious that the city will experience a terrible traffic heart attack for the next four years with the full responsibility of the government and Mr. Mitsotakis,” he noted. He also underlined that the specific impacts will be due precisely to the fact that project planning was not respected: “A choice was made to start the fly over project when the outer ring should have started first, which is a project studied and licensed, should have been completed first metro, and that the supply of electric buses and the strengthening and staffing of the OASTH had progressed. Now it seems that we are again being led to a management of extreme and negative impacts without again having the appropriate scientific and institutional tools. The government should even now act institutionally and file before the start of the project a valid and approved traffic and transportation study for the management of traffic impacts during the construction of the flyover, to make sure that there is at least a plan, and that there is no it’s all done by “seeing and doing” he noted, closing his post.

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