ATHENS – SYRIZA-Progressive Alliance party lashed out against the prime minister on Saturday, criticizing Kyriakos Mitsotakis’ public speech at the north Athenian suburb of Maroussi on the day.

The main opposition party charged Mitsotakis with “gross hypocrisy,” noting that the premier, “who has been in hiding for 17 days following his vulgar denial of responsibility, appeared today under the instructions of his American communicator in Maroussi, under the protection of riot police and Crime Prevention & Suppression Units (OPKE), surrounded by transported New Democracy party supporters who appeared as allegedly ‘local residents’ who cheered him on.”

SYRIZA stressed that “his gross hypocrisy is not only confirmed by his studied political and pre-electoral exploitation of the Tempi train tragedy, not even by the fact that he ruled for 4 years with corruption and incompetence (…), but “it is also confirmed by his audacity to talk about ‘vindication of the victims in Tempi, when in order to do away with his responsibilities he has made Mr. Gerapetritis tell vulgar lies that the remote train control center in Larissa was operarting [on the night of the accident], only to have been refuted by workers, the Hellenic Railways Organization (OSE), station masters and finally also television crews who have revealed a mess of a station there, right where until July 2019 the remote control center was located and in proper, working order,” the party noted.