“The coordinated operation of the parties is to hit in the same direction, not the hypocritical sensitivities,” said the MP for Chania, Pavlos Polakis, after his expulsion from the SYRIZA parliamentary group.
“In my soul, I remain SYRIZA and in the world that I represent. The people are the ones who respond in the end and put things in their place. The people put you in or take you out of the position of MP, and the party members are the ones who put you in or expel you from the party,” he added on ZARPA RADIO 89.6.
“You cannot, at the moment when an MP of a party makes a huge revelation about a scandal concerning the health center of Filiatra, where the energy upgrade will amount to 1.75 million euros, to let Mrs. Linou cry because I made a remark to a collaborator of Georgiadis. A remark, I neither insulted her nor cursed. I had no explosion. I simply said to her, ‘Why are you turning your face, madam?’” he noted, concluding that “New Democracy has been very disturbed by the revelations I make continuously from 2019 until today.”
It is recalled that the president of SYRIZA, Stefanos Kasselakis, said during his second speech at the SYRIZA – Progressive Alliance parliamentary group meeting that “I feel bad about the decision I was forced to make. It was a very difficult decision because I truly love him, and he has done great work at the Ministry of Health and in the country’s hospitals. Wherever I went, people talked to me about him. But in Parliament, we must be institutional and speak with the appropriate respect to all. Pavlos belongs to SYRIZA, but within the Parliament there are limits, and New Democracy has insulted the space of Parliament with various unconstitutional actions.”
Responding to the above, Pavlos Polakis came back with on-camera statements from the atrium of the Parliament, commenting that “love is not enough” and adding that “when you have the revelation of a scandal which is that instead of 300,000 euros at the health center of Filiatra, we are giving 1.75 million to do insulation and change windows.”
“You have a staff member in front of you constantly making faces while she should be sitting properly because I am an MP and a minister, and she is a staff member. I did not say any curse; I come from a place that respects women. I would do exactly the same again. When she makes faces, what should I say to her? Should I give her a carnation?” he added. “Crying on demand after two speakers, and after I have left the room. This is a setup, a display of sensitivity,” he said, referring to Athina Linou, while for the President of the Parliament, Konstantinos Tassoulas, he mentioned that “a vulgar beggar is one who eats 1.5 billion, Mr. President of the Parliament. It is those who made 15 billion euros in direct assignments, not me who revealed many things.”
“The crux of the matter is that the people decide whether someone is an MP or not. The members decide whether to expel or not. I have been unjustly and heavily excluded from the parliamentary group. I am one of the people who have exercised the toughest opposition to the neo-liberal onslaught of Mitsotakis. I continue, because they cannot talk about ethics or the substance of what I reveal or propose. Because New Democracy is bothered, I have lightened its parliamentary group of various members; they keep it from me,” he added.
It is recalled that Pavlos Polakis was expelled from the SYRIZA-Progressive Alliance parliamentary group, after a recommendation from Stefanos Kasselakis, shortly after a verbal attack during a meeting of the Social Affairs Committee of the Parliament on a collaborator of the Minister of Health. The President of the Parliament, Konstantinos Tassoulas, imposed a salary cut on the now-independent MP Pavlos Polakis after the incident.