ATHENS – Greek Minister of the Interior Makis Voridis, speaking on ERT’s main news broadcast, ruled out changing the electoral law for the election of representatives for the Greek Diaspora on the State ballot. “It is a structural flaw in the law, a consequence of the compromises we made with the Left in order to have a law,” he said, while also commenting on the fact that three MPs will be elected out of only about 3,000 voters from the Greeks living abroad.

Voridis, commenting on what Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has said about elections in April, emphasized that the Prime Minister “essentially said that the elections are after April” and added that the dissolution of the Parliament, in order to have elections in April, must take place in early to mid-March, at the latest.

At the same time, the Minister of the Interior expressed the belief that the ruling party will regain self-sufficiency. “We will be self-sufficient,” Voridis said about New Democracy, noting that this is what the polls show. After explaining the importance of the first electoral contest with a simple analogy, he pointed out that “the first polls will judge the first place, they will judge the difference and how close you will be to self-sufficiency.” In fact, referring to the opinion polls that show the percentage of ND moving from 34% to 36%, he said that, if they are verified, then “you are a breath away from self-sufficiency.”

When asked if there is a correlation with the elections in Turkey, as part of the Turkish press claims, Voridis said: “I don’t believe so. Obviously there is such a consideration, but one has to look at the constitutional margins.”

Among other things, to SYRIZA’s objections that ND is a party of corruption, on the occasion of the Patsis and Heimara cases, Voridis replied: “Listening to SYRIZA talking about moral issues, I think we are surpassing ourselves,” emphasizing that SYRIZA has two of its ministers in the Special Court who are accused of felonies and still has them as members. He also noted that Mitsotakis dismissed those ND ministers immediately, in contrast to Alexis Tsipras who is awaiting the decisions of the Special Court.