2023-12-21 07:16:17
The government’s parliamentary practice in the field of legislation came under intense criticism from the opposition last three days in Parliamentdue not only to the existence of last-minute amendments and unrelated content to the bill in which they were incorporated, but also to the choice for one more year to put forward for voting, as the last of the calendar year, a piece of legislation that constitutes stitching together dozens of amendmentsthe responsibility of several ministries.
The events in the Parliament, whose work was completed yesterday ahead of the festive period, were dense and numerous: in terms of amendments, a total of five were tabled in two bills, of which the first two are signed as co-authors by five ministers, while the other three 15 , 13 and 11 respectively. These are essentially amendments consisting of 33 articles and many dozens of pages (together with the accompanying documents and reports of the General State Accounts Office), which makes them whole bills.
The time of their testimony reached up to five minutes before midnight on the previous day of their discussion in plenary, while they included arrangements such as the one related to “Regeneration” in the Municipality of Athens or the one related to the increase in the salaries of non-parliamentary members of the government. As for the above-mentioned final piece of legislation of the year passed yesterday, which the government used the term “fundraising” to describe, it consisted of 97 unrelated articles, on almost the entire cabinet: from the Foreign Affairs portfolios , Internal to Social Cohesion and Digital Policy.
This particular phenomenon is timeless, a fact which gave the ruling majority the opportunity to defend itself. The Deputy Minister of National Economy and Finance Nick. Papathanasis, invoking yesterday the government tenure of SYRIZA and PASOK, said on the occasion of the criticism of the opposition: “The truth is that I did not expect such a big discussion to take place.” He also claimed that the number of amendments tabled by the current government is much smaller than what was recorded in previous periods.
The government “causes with this legislation blows to the citizens’ faith in parliamentarism and democracy”, said Mr. Dion earlier. Kalamatian (SYRIZA). Mrs. Milena Apostolaki spoke of “a counter example, a counter model of good legislation” (PASOK), Mr. Alex spoke about a “rag bill”. Kazamias (Freedom Sailing).
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