ATHENS – The role that PASOK seeks for itself is that of a responsible, reliable opposition whose policy programme will succeed in becoming the government plan for the country after the next general elections, PASOK President Nikos Androulakis said on Wednesday at a press conference in Zappion.

Androulakis said he had chosen to hold a press conference on this day, instead of at the Thessaloniki International Fair, because the prime minister’s presence at TIF at the weekend did not allow the opposition parties to “reply” to all he said.

“What we have experienced in recent months are the constant failures of the so-called Executive State,” Androulakis said, adding this had proved to be “the shell of a centre of power at the Maximos Mansion, where all state structures are controlled in a partisan and clientelist fashion.”

He noted that Greece had lived through a series of disasters in recent months, starting with the train wreck at Tempi, which was subsequently by destructive fires, the explosions at the army base in Aghialos, the flooding in Thessaly, as well as the murder of a football supporter by the Croatian football hooligans in Athens.

“If we had a state that generated safety and protected citizens…Antonis Kariotis might have been alive today,” he said.

He also criticised the state’s flood response, noting that after 11 days later it had not yet managed to dispose of the dead animals, creating a “health and hygiene bomb”.