ATHENS – Already apparently campaigning for 2023 elections, Greece’s major opposition SYRIZA leader and former premier Alexis Tsipras said the New Democracy government is aiding the elite while hurting the vulnerable.

He said most of Greek society has been left without help during soaring inflation although Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis’ administration has put more than 9 billion euros ($9.39 billion) into helping households pay 90 percent of electricity bills that have doubled.

Tsipras, who failed to deliver on almost all his promises while in power for 4 ½ years, wants a second chance at ruling and complained that the Conservatives are “biased against workers along class lines.”

He was speaking during an appearance in Serres in northwest Greece where he visited a labor center and said there was profiteering by cartels he didn’t identify which had created “an unprecendented redistribution of wealth against the middle class and the poor to benefit the strong,” said the state-run Athens-Macedonia News Agency AMNA.

He cited the energy bills that soared in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and said that according to the General Confederation of Workers of Greece (GSEE) Labor Institute that households have lost 40 percent of purchasing power in a year.

He said when he was in power – without mentioning he imposed austerity measures demanded by international bailout lenders he swore to reject – that his government raised the minimum wage when there was no inflation.

New Democracy “abolished fundamental legislative interventions protection workers – the justified layoff, collective labor agreements, controls through the Labor Inspectorate, and the eight-hour shift,” he said, although his government also held down workers rights.