A new episode is being added to the long-standing parliamentary confrontation between Justice Minister Georgios Floridis and Course of Freedom leader Zoe Konstantopoulou. The new parliamentary showdown centered on provisions regarding limited access to case files for defendants and lawyers when national security issues or witness protection are involved, as well as discussions about OPEKEPE and the Tempe rail tragedy case.
It all started when Georgios Floridis pointed out that “you don’t care if witnesses’ lives will be endangered, the lives of innocent people. Under SYRIZA, with Nikos Paraskevopoulos as minister, Alexis Tsipras as prime minister, and Zoe Konstantopoulou as parliament speaker, all the serious criminals in the country were released from prison. You released murderers, rapists and drug dealers! That’s why I spoke about worship of criminals’ rights“.
The Justice Minister’s statements prompted intervention from session chair Olga Gerovasili, who requested the remarks be struck from the record and called on him to stop making “provocative” characterizations. There was also reaction from opposition benches with MPs shouting: “What you’re saying is shameful!” MPs yelled at the Justice Minister, with him responding: “You should be ashamed of what you did!“.
Konstantopoulou vs Floridis: Which serious criminals do you mean? – Perhaps “The Butcher” and “Frappe”?
Shortly after, Zoe Konstantopoulou intervened in the session, saying that Georgios Floridis accuses the opposition of indifference regarding human life that could be endangered by serious criminals, while he himself is involved in the OPEKEPE case. “Which serious criminals do you mean? Perhaps ‘The Butcher’ and ‘Frappe’ who said they would screw over the European prosecutor?“, she asked him.
The decibel levels rose even higher when Zoe Konstantopoulou denounced “machinations” regarding the case file formed for the Tempe rail tragedy. “After the collapse of the wood chip fraud, after the murdered son of the prosecutor, now we have a new novel about the case file. Next will come the… Nephilim and the aliens! Such is the depth of grief from the fraud’s collapse“, Georgios Floridis commented mockingly, with Ms. Konstantopoulou responding that “they’re going all out for every kind of ‘cover-up’ of evidence, proof, even the dead“.
