ATHENS — In a renewed attack on the government's handling of the mass media sector, main opposition SYRIZA spokesperson Alexis Charitsis on Monday again claimed a lack of transparency in the disbursement of public funds and an attempt to manipulate the media landscape in order to exclude the voice of opposition parties.

Talking on radio Alpha 98.9, he noted that the government's handling of media issues was "taking us back to very dark times" and that this concerned all of Greek society and the way that it views democracy.

"The main thing in the case of untransparent financing of mass media enterprises is the government's attempt to use public money to manipulate the media," he said, adding that "the government must be persuaded to do what is legal, to stop breaking the law and make public the sums it has given each media outlet from public coffers."

He said that a SYRIZA video that was currently being broadcast aimed to highlight and satirise "this wasteful spending of public money" on media selected by the government at will, "the extortion and manipulation" of the media, as well as the financing of "non-existent sites set up in the last few weeks, which belong to members of New Democracy and are not on the online media register created by SYRIZA."