ATHENS – The year 2022 “can and must become the year of the great change and one of a new start,” SYRIZA-Progressive Alliance leader Alexis Tsipras said in his New Year’s message on Friday, while adding that the start of the new year comes “with insecurity and uncertainty, both for life and for a dignified living.”

On the eve of the New Year, he said, nearly every Greek family is experiencing stressful and insecure times from the exponential rise of infections. “Our hospitals have gone beyond capacity a long time ago, doctors and nurses have reached their limits, while the holiday table will be more expensive this year than ever before, since the wave of high prices has hit unprecedented heights,” Tsipras added.

The major opposition party leader criticized the government for what he claimed were “the worst results in loss of lives and among the worst health services,” and said that Greece “went through a great economic crisis and came out of it only to have a large segment of the population despair, since their income runs out by the third week of the month.” Tsipras said these were results of government choices that magnified the results.

“Now we have to face our own responsibility and choice, individual and collective responsibility, and not allow this dystopia for long, becoming normality. We must take back our life and dignity and fight on all fronts of life,” Tsipras said, expressing the wish that 2022 becomes the year of great change.