ATHENS – Greece’s main opposition SYRIZA leader and former premier Alexis Tsipras is trying to dupe people ahead of 2023 elections after fooling them for 4 ½ years while ruling, New Democracy spokesman Giannis Oikonomou said.

“The only things Tsipras ‘offered’ to the citizens were lies, taxes and cuts due to his incoherent choices. And today he has nothing substantial to offer, beyond easy words, smiles and handshakes,” said Oikonomou, reported the state-run Athens-Macedonia News Agency AMNA.

“He is in complete turmoil and trying to plunge the country into instability and poverty once again, desperately seeking a political way out of his political impasse. The Greeks have seen what is really hidden behind the mask of Mr. Tsipras and they do not forget,” he added.

Tsipras has been sniping at Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis for months but making no headway as the Conservatives hold leads from 8-14 percent in surveys and twice as many Greeks prefer Mitsotakis to be the country’s leader.

While in power, Tsipras reneged on virtually all his promises, including vows not to impose austerity and to take Greece out of NATO, and accepted international bailouts he swore he would reject.

Economou was responding to Tsipras’ latest attack against the government over demonstrations in Athens over soaring inflation that have cut deep into households ability to manage although growth is expected to hit 6 percent in 2022 even during the waning COVID-19 pandemic.

“The people of labor know and recognize that the government has managed, in the midst of successive structural international crises, to protect – to the extent possible and better than most European countries – the Greek society from the effects of high energy prices and a price spike in goods: with permanent subsidies, with a reduction in taxes, with an increase in the minimum salary, with an improvement in the labour legislation, with a reduction in unemployment,” said Oikonomou.

Tsipras described the strike mobilization as a “resounding response” by the workers and the Greek society “to the regime of high prices, profiteering, insecurity, corruption and indignity.”

He lashed out at the “regime of the Mitsotakis government, which shrinks democracy and plunges the Greek society into despair. Every passing day makes the rich richer, the middle class poor and the poor desperate.”

“It is a strong message that the people can provide a way out. This will be achieved with their active presence, and of course with the prospect of a major political change in the polls,” he also underlined.

The leader of the main opposition underlined that, “There is an alternative solution to protect the Greek society,” but didn’t describe after earlier saying if he wins in 2023 he will do what he didn’t do while ruling before.

He said that, “The country cannot be the worst in Europe in prices, in profiteering, in deaths from the pandemic, worst in wages,” adding to his avalanche of criticism that isn’t working, the polls also showed.