Greek government faces no confidence vote over wiretaps

[Eugene]

Source: Associated Press

Greek government faces no confidence vote over wiretaps

January 25, 2023

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — The leader of Greece’s main opposition party filed a no confidence motion against the government Wednesday over a wiretapping scandal that has stung the center-right ruling party ahead of elections this year.

Alexis Tsipras, leader of the left-wing Syriza party, said he submitted the motion “for the defense of democracy, transparency and justice.” He said Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis “will be forced to come to Parliament – even if he constantly wants to run away – to give explanations, to be accountable, to answer.”

Lawmakers will vote on the motion after a three-day debate which begins Wednesday evening. With 156 of parliament’s 300 seats held by the governing New Democracy party, the motion is not expected to be approved.

The wiretapping scandal broke in earnest in August last year, when a top government aide and the head of the country’s intelligence agency resigned following revelations that a Socialist politician who was later elected as head of Greece’s third largest party had been under telephone surveillance. Mitsotakis had insisted at the time that the wiretapping was legal but improper, and that had he known about it he would not have approved it.

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Read more: https://apnews.com/article/politics-greece-government-alexis-tsipras-scandals-2c5dade510de02caf6b9cd19fe90cb73

[peppertree]

1. Another Pegasus client; another surveillance scandal

But like the cops and intelligence agents doing the very same thing under Argentina's Macri, they should've known that they'd be thrown under the bus the second it became public knowledge.

While the masterminds of the plot are, of course, cleared in kangaroo right-wing courts (the judges who cleared Macri were even his tennis partners - and often played football at his suburban estate).

These things often have very Trumpian angles.