ΑΤΗΕΝS – “Our country has paid and is paying dearly for the Mitsotakis government…with the pandemic, where we are at two times the European average for deaths in proportion to the population, and we are paying for it in high prices, where we remain the only country with a lower minimum wage than in 2010. In this sense, the demand for political change remains open and urgent,” main opposition SYRIZA-Progressive Alliance spokesperson Nasos Iliopoulos said on Atlas TV on Thursday night.

He said that the government under Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis was to blame for the “tragic” situation in healthcare in Greece “because it has never believed in the public health system” and continued to “cultivate complacency”.

“When we find ourselves in the 4th and 5th wave at two times above the EU average for deaths we are not talking about mistakes but a political choice. Let me remind you that we paid for Mr. Mitsotakis’ ‘last mile’ in 2021 with 15,952 deaths, and we are already counting 1,576 deaths in January,” Iliopoulos said.

He expressed the belief that the government was planning new cutbacks to the national health system, citing the prime minister’s references to shutting down regional hospitals and the health minister’s references to a “new healthcare map”.

On the high cost of living, Iliopoulos said the government was not taking radical steps “because it has again underestimated the problem” and considered it a temporary phenomenon, noting that the prime minister had predicted that the problem would be “over by Christmas” in September 2021.

“Already the latest analyses are talking about conditions that will continue for up to two years,” he said, repeating SYRIZA’s proposals for an increase in the minimum wage and a lowering of the Public Power Corporation’s rates, as well as cuts to the special consumption tax on fuels and a writing off of debts built up by small businesses during the pandemic.