Sources within the main opposition party headquarters are warning that the government is attempting to implicate the Hellenic Police and former Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras in any potential incidents during today’s student, university, and teacher demonstrations. Opposition officials stress that this strategy has been in the works for several days, with the deliberate aim of pinning responsibility for any violent clashes on the former prime minister.
Officials from the left-wing opposition alliance pointed out that the government appears to be forgetting that young Greeks face the same hardships as young people in France, Belgium, Spain, and Portugal. Here too, young people cannot afford housing or live independently, and whatever income they earn is devoured by the cost of living crisis. They also highlighted that just recently, 800 students were unable to enrol in their university programs because their families could not provide financial support. “These are the reasons our young people want to protest peacefully. It is the state’s duty to ensure that the march remains peaceful,” opposition officials said.
Alexis Tsipras, who was on his second day of a campaign tour in Thessaly yesterday, addressed the government’s alleged plan directly: “And of course today I see the government’s representatives in a panic — and the prime minister himself talking about stability — while referring to the reactions, to the uprising of young people, and to the violent incidents that, as always, accompany them — carried out by a minority that wants to distract from the core issue: that young people are searching for hope, for a future, for the right to dream.”
He went on to add: “It is perfectly understandable that the government feels threatened. Over the past three years, with virtually no meaningful opposition, Adonis Georgiadis’s New Democracy party attempted to take its ‘revenge’ on the progressive world by branding every form of social protest as ‘chaos and disorder.’ And suddenly, Tsipras has taken that role away from them — standing on the side of citizens who are protesting peacefully and clearly distinguishing them from the minority that resorts to violence.”
Notably, the government spokesperson once again brought Alexis Tsipras’s name into the spotlight, accusing him of providing political cover to Panos Lamprinidis-Stachtos — a youth member of the opposition party — over his remarks that essentially called for similar mobilisations in Greece following protests across European countries.
According to the government spokesperson, rather than distancing himself from those controversial statements, Tsipras endorsed and applauded them. “Mr. Tsipras didn’t do a rebranding — he used a time machine that didn’t take him back to 2010, but to 2008,” the spokesperson remarked sharply, evoking the era of street protests and university occupations. “Greece has left all that behind, because we are not where we used to be,” he added, accusing Tsipras of employing a tactic of “saying one thing and then backtracking.”
When asked about today’s rally, the spokesperson called on the opposition to take a clear and unequivocal stand in favour of peaceful protest and against violence. “If you want to be clearly on the right side of this, you come out with a firm ‘no’ to disorder and looting,” he said.
