ATHENS – Greece’s pre-election campaign, with polls coming sometime before July, 2023, is picking up steam with the major opposition SYRIZA charging the New Democracy government with irresponsible spending.

Two Leftist Members of Parliament, Mariliza Xenogiannakopoulou and Alexis Charitsis criticized a concession they said was provided to a private company for consulting services, said the state-run Athens-Macedonia News Agency ANA-MPA.

“The government continues unabated its reckless spending of the Recovery Fund resources. Following the Environment and Energy Ministry’s 17 million (euros) for a technical consultant, now it is the Labor ministry’s turn, with a recent concession of 2.8 million (euros) with a private company to provide consulting, while another 9.6 million euros are earmarked for services of coordination and management of projects, as the ‘Efimerida ton Syntakton’ (Ef.Syn) reveals today,” they said in a statement.

They said small and medium-sized businesses were left out and the government was playing favorites and “is now generously paying private consultants for services that can and must be provided by public administration, as graduates of the National Public Administration School charge themselves in a statement.”

The two deputies charged the government with “distributing to the few and elect valuable funds that the real economy needs and has a right to,” a catastrophic policy that only a change in government could resolve, they said.

SYRIZA, formerly known as the Radical Left and now as the Progressive Alliance, spent 4 ½ years in power before being routed in July, 2019 snap elections and keeps portraying New Democracy and Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis as elitists out of touch with the people and electorate.

New Democracy had leads of as high as 14 percent but that has been cut in half after a spyware scandal, soaring inflation which cut into the pocketbooks of Greek households and worries about Turkish provocations among issues.