Phaedon Vovolis

[Wayne Hall]

Phaedon Vovolis

2023 New Year's Message

Happy New Year and greetings to all Greeks. We are on the brink. I am very happy that the health workers are back at work. But this isn't the end. The end will come with the full repayment of what the health workers have not been paid for sixteen months now. We are not going to forget a single promise that we have made. The end will come also when those who deprived these people and their families of absolutely everything for sixteen months now are made to face their responsibilities. The prisons must be opened. The courts must pass judgement, and they will pass judgement. That will be the end of this story that has lasted two years with accusations being levelled at everyone, with everyone having their backs to the wall and with knives at the throat of health workers, who were not being allowed to live, to survive. The message this evening is different. The talk is of elections. One hundred days before the elections. This is why we started talking about health workers. We started talking about deprivation of our freedoms. We started talking about a web, a mesh that is hurting all of us. And what did we do? We started a movement. We started a party. For that reason. There was no way that we would start a fake party, as certain tricky people did, starting a fraction that would make it into the parliament so that they could pocket the subsidies and make money. There was no way that we were going to accept any opportunist who wanted to come our way, because quite a few came here, and some stayed in their jobs, others aimed at striking profitable deals, others lost their nerve and became inactive, others wanted to mislead people. We didn't keep any of them in our big group. We organized others and organized ourselves. We promised certain things. It is certain, at least for us, that we are not like the others. Who has been governing during these years? The Karatzaferis government. George Karatzaferis brought out his chosen far-right people. There were four of them. Three of them are theoretically in New Democracy now and one of them is theoretically in the opposition. And what did they all do? They voted the memoranda and made money. This isn't our point. Our point is: dear New Democrats, you are not in the New Democracy you thought you are in. You see far rightists, together with a mishmash of leftists ruling this country in an authoritarian style which doesn't in any way match your ideology. What do former PASOK supporters see? They see energy being squandered between SYRIZA and KINAL. SYRIZA isn't a party which represents those people. It is quite extreme in its views. It is anti-patriotic and it isn't what they stood for with the historic old PASOK. KINAL, a very conservative party, which extends to the fringes of the blue party, the one-time New Democracy, again, in no way expresses the free-thinking milieu that was created by Andreas Papandreou. Those people have not been there and are not there. Who could you trust? Who could you trust when elections come? It is the day after. What do these people do? These people create division. These people choose themselves to go on television, and their opponents. The opponents they want. Some as stooges, others as SYRIZA, as they are called, and what do they do? Will they govern? Of course not. They are on the same side, and everyone knows that. If you don't trust us, please vote for them. It will be more of the same. But because there are thousands, hundreds of thousands, of people who do trust us, who trust the honesty of what we say, but also the actions that we could put into practice today, I ask for your support, the support of Hellenes, of free Hellenes, who cannot be oppressed by anybody and cannot say what they are demanding on any absolutist television channel. Turn off your televisions. We will come off the internet. We will come off everywhere. We will be at your side. I will start the struggle and I will be present in almost all of the cities in the country, before the elections and after them as well. We have done what we said we would do. We were with you. We didn't miss a day, or even an hour, or left a single group complaining that they aren't getting support from us. That is always how we will be. That is how we started. We didn't start out to get our hands on money, and we will bring in a whole range of security measures so that nobody will feel they are not being treated fairly. This movement is different in every way. See if you can find anyone else in the game who is like us. With this kind of organization, with this kind of people. And with this kind of policy program. Because you know there are some who are saying "they have no experience". Who has experience? Those who are in parliament? Tsipras has experience, not Kyriakos Mitsotakis. What does experience mean for you? Does it just mean being in parliament? Or does it mean knowing how to practise politics. Ask one of those a question on a subject outside their field of competence. What they know. I have been involved with politics since 1989. Perhaps I wasn't given the foothold to go ahead and play the role I wanted. But I was involved. And the degree of knowledge that each person has will be judged by how far he helps his country and its citizens, Greek citizens. Who is the one who will put his foot down? What do we want as a country? Better governance. Those people can't govern because they are in thrall to money. They are in thrall to the Europeans. We can, and we will. And you know very well, and you can see, that this armada, the people you see with us, will move us forward and take us to where you want, because you are us and we are you, and we will get results. The result we want is the power to govern. Power in Hellenic hands. Power in your hands. I can't put up with the sight of people going hungry. I can't put up with the sight of pensioners, people in the last years of their lives, begging, asking for money. Not having food to eat at Christmas and Easter. This is an unimaginable reality. As is people being homeless. As is the other groups of people at a productive age and not having money. This means that all of our team, from one end of country to the other, is being activated. And I ask you all of you, who have over the years supported small parties or larger ones, to rally around us, and be with us. With us, because we deserve it and we are able to act and we will. Above and beyond all bitterness I want to say this: I am interested in political practice and in political theory and in discourse. I am not going to focus on or argue against any of the parties that have not been in government. That is something you will decide. You don't need any help to judge them. Like you, we just observe them. We don't know anything more. But we will target the parties that have been lording it over Greece: New Democracy, SYRIZA and KINAL, the former PASOK. Those whose concrete actions have made them accountable will be held to account and we will take it as far as you yourselves want. And what you want is justice. I know this. You want the prisons to be opened and they will be. I want you to know that we will see it though to the end. This makes us the sole danger. This makes us the only ones they don't want to be visible. If you have noticed, those they are not afraid of they allow to be given publicity: on television, in opinion surveys. But there is an unheard eighteen to twenty percent that is entirely left out, and when the rest of the country finds out, woe to them. This is the sole truth. The sole truth is right where we are, all of us. The time is now. There are a hundred days left. There is nothing more or less. What you will go through if they form the next government will be something much worse than what you have lived through during the last two years. Don't be bothered by the noise. In any case we are noisy. And we will be noisy until our final victory and your victory. What you have lived through was terrorism: never-ending violence. There will be more of it, and worse. They won't show any respect. They will do what they haven't done so far. At this time the climate has calmed slightly, for one reason: the elections. Think about it. Nothing different has happened from last year. Everything and everyone was locked up and we were all threatened by others watching us. Isn't that so? We are all free, theoretically and in danger from each other. This is enough to show the dimensions of the trickery. And you will also understand it from the damage it has done to our health. There is a shortage of medicines. Governments have been elected that have taken away our money, taken away our medicines, taken away everything. And they are making money out of it. As much as they are trying to hold us back, you know that they are not going to succeed. Now there is just you and us. Get with us, join us. As for the other organizations: we like them, we respect them. But they are smaller and weaker than we are. With one grouping and one organization to fight for, all together. Get with it and we will take what is called governmental power. "Too many cooks spoil the broth", as the saying goes* and that is why I didn't go to the very big union of fractions but instead I am going to the very big union of the social base. Put your hand on your heart and with your feelings and your mind judge for the sake of your children. It is the last chance for Greeks. We will pursue it to the bitter end. That's why we are here. We will get results, but only with your help. Only if you believe that "yes, there is a a difference with this". There IS a difference, my friends. The time has come. From today I announce the opening of the last of the pre-election periods that we have lived through. It is going to be very tough. We are all going to be in it. All together. Nobody is unneeded. Our big embrace will include, obviously, people who haven't caused problems for our country, people who haven't wasted public money and really want what is good. Anyone I notice who wants something else will be expelled from the task of our great struggle. It is inevitable that they will infiltrate. We know this. We are not Vassilis Leventis who battles for seventy years to get into the parliament and in the seventy first is elected and when they try to get rid of him does something else in parliament to what he said previously. And we are not Karatzaferis who formed a little grouping and got as far as three and a half percent. Or Velopoulos, whose three and a half percent was a way to pocket subsidies. Not any of them. Or Kammenos either, who went into a coalition and became complicit. What I say to you is that I am not going to collaborate with any party in the parliament. With any of those parties. On our own, together with you. That is enough for us to come to power. With nobody who has done you harm. You are not going to hear any excuse that "You know. There is no choice. We have to control them." That is what Salvini said. Salvini made a mistake in Italy. He couldn't do it, and Mrs. Melloni took over the government. We are not going to make that kind of mistake. We are going to keep our integrity, entirely and you will be passing judgement on us continually. There will be referenda four and five times a year. That is what you are asking for. And of course the political prisons will be opening for all of those who have thought that it is all over. We haven't finished. We are starting. We have just started now. And we are starting together with you. We are not going to leave anything out. We want you to keep a check on us. We want to be in continual dialogue. We will be with you, and we will be in discussion continually. As we have been up to now. With no holds barred. The battle is starting now. Anyone who thinks we have connections with New Democracy, with Dendias, with Rothschild, with anything else. Or if they're telling you that we're hanging out with Velopoulos, please, switch it off. But if you are ignoring the stupefying nonsense they try to put over, then support us. We will make it. The Free Again movement will succeed in doing what nobody has managed to do for forty seven years in this country. To restore the lost honour of the country. To make Greece great again and enable our children to live a life of dignity. If we can't succeed, nobody can. Good night, keep up the fight. here's to freedom.

*The equivalent Greek expression is: "When too many cocks crow, dawn is late in coming."

[Wayne Hall]

Democracy fears no-one

January 2023

Good evening. Once upon a time we dreamt of liberty, democracy and the democratic Hellenic polity. This state produced a theoretically magnificent polity which certain people have attempted to misappropriate. The public became disgusted. They are disgusted with the polity because of the politicians. Obviously it is not the polity itself that is to blame but rather those who have in theory served it for the last forty five years at least in our country, and more, I would say. There have been a lot of them and they have attempted to take over a whole country and reduce it to a condition of non-democracy, unfreedom. As has happened in recent years. An outrageous prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis. We arrived in Alexandroupolis. We arrived at the Evros following a very great, very moving indeed, reception. In general this period has been very beautiful for us. Mitsotakis himself made an attempt to stop us through their media. He tried to ensure that we wouldn't generate this climate. He himself coincidentally found himself in the same region but obviously in the tour that he made he didn't manage to assemble anything comparable to our attendance. On the contrary, he was booed, he was disapproved of, he had a huge entourage and wherever he went there was a problem. This person tried to split us, just as he tried many times in the past, during these years that Greeks have struggled to survive. The years when doctors were muzzled, doctors were ridiculed, journalists were muzzled, even artistic personalities were muzzled so that the politicians could carry out the prescriptions of what they wanted to represent as a democracy but has essentially been tyranny. All of this at the Evros which we visited and once again it showed us the truth: that people were seeking us out, and wanting to have contact with us. And telling us: "You know, we haven't been informed". Even though we have done everything we can to inform people. But the local stations have been silent. They were ordered to be silent, by the prime minister, by the government. A government that is trying to make you forget. You shouldn't ever forget. Tomorrow, coincidentally again, we are going to be in Plateia Eleftherias in Korydallos, at ten thirty in the morning. In a cafe, to talk with the public. At the same time the Prime Minister himself is having a meeting, in Plateia Eleftherias in Korydallos, in a cafe. To talk with the public also. Really these coincidences are becoming very very frequent. And we are seeing who is afraid and what exactly they are afraid of. Because as you know, whoever you are not afraid of you promote. Through your television stations, through your gallup polls. and so on. But those you are afraid of you exclude and you copy. And I come to the controversial subject I have to take a position on, because we won't cease taking a position, however difficult that may be, however tempting it is to be flattering. I want you to know that we can't always be with you, the people who love us, on all subjects. If we agree on eight out of ten subjects we can disagree on two. For example, exactly as was done once when communists were excluded and made into pariahs in Greek society, the communist student movement mushroomed and after a few years the communist left political current expanded in reaction to the exclusion. And the same thing happened afterwards with the royalists, and you know quite well that I am not a communist, and nor am I a royalist. The royalists were excluded too, through a referendum. There was a great referendum, of course, through which royalists were definitely sidelined. This is something which for me is insulting for democracy. But we always respect opponents. But in this way support for the monarchy was inflated. These days the royalists were strengthened through not being allowed to pay due respects to a former head of state. We don't want the monarchy. We don't like the monarchy. But Greeks know how to honour our dead. The dead person in this instance was a former head of state. That is what should have been done, and nothing more. Of course they were able to come out and show their feelings, a lot of them. It was made clear who were royalists and who were not. It is not an indictable offence. Everyone has the right. But for me there is no such thing as a democracy with a monarch. There is democracy and monarchy. If you are not elected. One could say "we have seen those who are elected and what they do." The polity is not to blame if politicians are trash. You can change your politicians. You can't change kings and queens.

Continuing, I have something else to say. Just as happened with communists who flourished through being excluded, and with the royalists, who are having a new lease of life because of stupid exclusion, in exactly the same way they are trying to brand me and our party far right in our country. Everyone knows that I am against anything far right, anything extreme, anything far left. I don't like extremes. We are the in the middle: we express positions from the boundaries of the left to the boundaries of the right. But not extreme expressions. But there is no way that I am not going to defend a people that wishes to support this or that party. They have a right to stand for election. All the parties have a right to stand for election. If the existing law, the law that exists now, turns around and says that its founder, or its leader, given that he is behind bars, given that he has been condemned, cannot participate, very well, let him not participate, but let him be able to put someone else in his place. It is not right at this time for an entire party, or the people who believe in it, however wrong this may seem, to be condemned. And I speak as someone who is not in that party and is not ever going to work with them. Because there are some who will say you want to work with them etcetera etcetera etcetera. Everyone knows that we are targeted by them. With the stupid, childish tactics of these people you would think that we were their opponents. We will never be their opponents. Our outlook is something entirely different. We in any case are aiming at governing, not just opposing. But there is no way that I cannot defend individuals and people, a party that wants to stand for election and nobody else in it has ever been charged with anything. It is like saying, for example, that KINAL, its leader, say, is condemned for violence against women, that the entire KINAL party cannot stand for election. No, of course. The leader will be punished. The leader will be punished and excluded. There are other people and this does not make it a criminal organization. The criminal organization that was judged as such by the courts Golden Dawn was imprisoned. If one of its members founded a party that doesn't mean that all the party is a criminal organization. There are people who are extreme right: this is what we have defined them as, national socialists. I don't like any of their theories. I disagree with most of them, but I defend their right to stand for election. Both them, and leftists and any party, ANTARSIA, any other party. Any party that operates legally. I don't think that a party is not operating legally because its leader is in prison. This means that all of us must put a ring-fence around our democracy. No Mitsotakis with photographic trickery and hastily passed legislation is going to dictate who will be playing the game, unless your intention is - which I don't want to believe - to make them into victims. To magnify them for some purpose of your own in the eyes of the people. I don't want to imagine that. So until that time, which I don't want to imagine - I will imagine what I like - I want everyone to support all the parties in standing for election. Freedom and democracy does not stop if one stops the opponent, anyone who has a different flag, another doctrine. Democracy and freedom go forward and will be a lesson for all in this country. Because we are democracy, we are freedom and I want all the players in the game. It is only in this way that there can be objectivity. And the people can decide. No Mitsotakis, no little dictator of the small calibre of Mitsotakis can. We will talk tomorrow in Plateia Eleftherias in Korydallos, for another defeat of Kyriakos Mitsotakis, like that at the Evros. Whatever you hide, whoever you bring, you can't match the popular tide that you have tried for so long to muzzle and hold back. Good night, until tomorrow.

[Wayne Hall]

ADDRESS FOLLOWING ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE RESULT OF THE GREEK NATIONAL ELECTION OF 25th JUNE 2023

Phaedon Vovolis

Good evening ladies and gentlemen. It was a great victory of Kyriakos Mitsotakis and New Democracy. As conclusions we must admit the following: nothing problematic occurred in the last three years. There was no Tempe disaster. Kyriakos Mitsotakis is not to blame for anything. New Democracy was not to blame for anything. We were wrong. The mandatory rulings were very proper. There was no blackmail. There was no mob rule, no psychological pressuring, Greeks were not pestered, there wasn't any place where things were problematic, the government of Kyriakos Mitsotakis always did what was right. That is what Greeks have just shown. This is what we accept, to judge by the elections. To judge by what we have done. There have been no scandals. There has been nothing strange throughout all of this period. Our only problem was precisely the divisiveness that was shown on television. Tsipras or Mitsotakis.The Greek people made their choice. The Greek people chose. Kyriakos Mitsotakis' government of the last three years was one of the most successful there has ever been. This is precisely the choice that has been made. We shouldn't complain about anything. Nothing strange has happened and nothing strange is going to happen. The only strange thing that has happened all these years is us. We, who reacted spasmodically, and the Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis justifiably characterized people such as this as conspiracy theorists, problematic people, people who basically just caused problems for the government which was trying to help this country, and save it. He had various names for these people and as it turned out he was right. That has been shown by the Greek people today.

Another idea that has been confirmed today: I don't ever want to hear again from anyone, from any person, the word unity. We here on our sites, on our pages, will accept, and we always accept, freedom of expression, democracy, and all of you speaking and writing. The only ones we aren't going to accept any more are those who write about unification. They are the only ones who, politely, will be removed from the page. Unification was born and ended today in this country. We are not ever again going to try to achieve unification, to have parties uniting. Greeks confirmed and rewarded parties with a single leader, parties that are on their own, essentially. They gave to every party confirmation that this was the way they should proceed. But we too are once more called "Free Again", with a single leader. We never changed that. I want to say that the word "unification" - because we heard it very often, and mostly in relation to our own profile, and I was always asking "who can we unite with?" and finally we did unite and they said "no, we don't like them. We want it with some others." - from today it is the only word that we won't allow ever to be heard. There is no more unification Those who struggled for unification for all these years understand that no effort is ever going to be made now to achieve it. Those who tried - there are also other conclusions - some people tried. Perhaps I should put it differently. Whatever happens from this point on, people have representatives - someone to speak for them in the parliament. They have a certain Vassileos Stingas or Stringas or something like that who has obviously been rewarded for his efforts all these years. I don't know where he was, but it has paid off. Clearly it is not we who have been rewarded, not me not Zois Bekris, not Thanassis Kolyvas, not hundreds of people who put up a struggle but essentially the struggle was unsuccessful. We obviously made a mistake mobilizing people and made a mistake resisting. Whatever happens in September, whether it is a health care crisis or whatever it is: Prespes, the Aegean, which are being partitioned, the Aegean is being partitioned, or Macedonia, which nobody is fighting for, or the fence up there where the illegal immigrants, those people, can enter our country freely. I want people to turn to Mr. Stingas or Stringas or to Mr. Dimitris Natsios, with the calm strength he displays, a person with a strangely dignified political style, and to the religious fundamentalists who want to turn Greece into Pakistan, and to Mrs. Zoi Konstantopoulou, who is clearly going to be sending love tokens to all and sundry (irony). With all this eccentricity the parliament will continue on its course. This is what Kyriakos Mitsotakis chose. He chose to annihilate Alexis Tsipras. He chose his opponents, those that he put into parliament. Because he sponsored them. And he naturally chose to disperse those who opposed him, those who rallied thousands on the streets, so that they would not be vindicated, at least in the parliament, because in every other sense we have been vindicated, and people who struggled and kept Greeks' self-respect afloat would be kept out. But I am forgetting something: they didn't defend anyone's self-respect. As is evident, with figures like that I understand it all. But in any case we respect the people's will. We continue on this basis. From September they will all be talking to those who express their preferences. That is what they want. We, Free Again, and I will be leading, will continue to express those thousands of people who supported us both the first time and now. And we thank them wholeheartedly. We saw incredible love from people. Crazy levels of love. They may have been in the thousands. But there was them and many others who didn't have the opportunity - because of Mitsotakis' system - to get to know us. Because as you understand, there was just one step between success and failure. What was it? Promotion. Only that. He wanted to promote three or four parties to go into the parliament and take over our role. Because he knew we would have made things very difficult. And he managed to do it. He gave exorbitantly large sums of money to the television channels. And he promoted the young woman with the love tokens, the religious enthusiast, Vassilis Stringas/Stingas or whatever, and he kept the old faithful Velopoulos, who filled the bill very well. These are the key protagonists of the people as determined by the popular preference. And we must give our consent. We give it, and the word "sprayed" that he used (Greek equivalent of 'tin foil hat wearer') is apt, because they are "sprayed". They do one thing, they shout another thing, they clamour one way, they vote another way. We can't believe that there is such huge electoral fraud that New Democracy takes forty-one percent, or forty-three percent, of the vote, or that certain others make their appearance, coming suddenly. Some turned up two months before the elections, others twenty-five days before the second elections, and that is how they were able to get in. If someone says they were pushed from behind by some far-rightists, they should know that Vassileos Stringas or Stingas is the one who will be the front man. Whoever is behind him will never ever appear up front. Never. He will never practise politics. So if we drop hints of that kind, if you think that somebody is going to be rewarded who is imprisoned and should be imprisoned, then you are wrong. This gentleman, Mr. Stringas or Stingas or whatever, is the one who will be defending you in the parliament. And anywhere.

So this is what our role will be. We will mobilize the people, the thousands, some thousands, of people, who believed in us and loved us, because we can't abandon them, these people. Some others might be able to say: we're quitting. We will say that today we are beginning. The purpose of "Free Again" has been clear, and it remains as it was, and I say it again, after our great, huge, defeat: the power to govern. And however difficult it may be for anyone to believe this tonight, the power to govern is something that sooner or later will come, but in order for it to come there is going to have to be a gigantic struggle, a tremendous fight, which we ourselves will begin, to satisfy not only ourselves but also those that are waiting to get to know us but haven't, I repeat, had the opportunity to get to know us. I accept exclusive responsibility for this great defeat, on my own. I am the person with prime responsibility. And the rectification will be carried out internally. It seems that two years was not enough. We need more time. But to get to the top as required you have to start to sort things out from within: the people, and the actions. Whether it is colorful characters who sing the praises of abstention from voting and 51% of the electorate did not vote, and we see what happened, because if 51% had voted they would certainly have voted for New Democracy. And if they had voted, as they themselves say, they are extra-parliamentary and they would have supported us or some other party and we could be exactly where we deserve to be. So much for abstention. One point is these characters, who for us will be out. Next is the think tank groupers who all this time tried to make problems for us. We know them, we see them, we are familiar with them. We have the opportunity and we have the means to consign them to the junkyard and leave them behind us. People who held meetings with us one day in their homes and the next day invited others. People who had a great problem with us. They showed it everywhere. They tried to erect every possible obstacle against us. And all of these people created the current situation in Greece. What is it? Division. People who had other parties, and didn't come to join together with us. Because they wanted to go it alone. And naturally performed far below their presumed potential, which didn't exist anyway. People who had newspapers, like "Eleftheri Ora", like "Democratia", like "Estia", like some cute little television channels such as ProNews, which all played their role in favour of division. Division and mudslinging. A lot of mud. We will settle accounts with all of them. If we don't get things straight with them, we won't be taking the next step. How we will get things straight? It will be in our own way. We know how to do it Legally. Everything legal. With a lot of work. But all of these germs of the system which are convenient for themselves, or for others, or for those who are directing it, we are not going to keep among us any more. They have done enough damage. All of us have to understand that the system is relentless, and it is going ahead. When a system is going ahead it is very difficult to check it unless you are very well organized.

So today represented a huge defeat for unification, a huge defeat for all of us. We clearly made a mistake. Obviously we made all the mistakes in the world. But it is clear that the love of the people who gave it to us is something we sooner or later must reciprocate. We do not submit. We support our country, on the streets or wherever else it is needed. We are not people who came out just to talk. We are not people who came out just to make a noise. We are people who don't agree to leave our communities in the hands of certain people who want to appoint their own opponents. I want to thank everyone for this struggle we have waged. I would like you to remember exactly what I have said this evening. It is very significant. The Mitsotakis government succeeded. We have all made a mistake. And the mistake will be corrected. Mistakes are corrected when you want to change. Everything can be rectified when you believe it can. But first of all, all of those think tank groupers, all of those who are courtiers of power, all of those who are on our fringes and say "Yes, we'll come with you" or "If you don't give us a position we can't do anything", and they go elsewhere, all of those who play at being patriots for show and achieve a fifty-one percent turnout and think something has been gained, we're not going to allow them any more to get in the way. We're changing our tactics. We're changing our policy. We're changing everything. Given that we have made such a big mistake we have to change. I change first. I will be first to change everything. This is my promise to those who are loyal to us. Very loyal. Because there are a lot of people who are very loyal to us, even if many of them were not able to give us their vote, for one reason or another. If they got confused and got involved with fundamentalist victories (nikes) or ancient Spartans or I don't know what else, what I want to say from today is that I want you to have faith and confidence. We too believe in God but we don't ever use it to get people lamenting their fate or use it as a stepping stone to power. We will proceed with politics, pure and simple and with the sentiment and the practice that I have learnt from you and imparted to you. For everyone who has believed in us, for everyone who weren't able to, and didn't have the opportunity to, get to know us because of what the Mitsotakis government did to the television stations, let us proceed. September is not far off. I wish everyone a good summer.

[Wayne Hall]

PHAEDON VOVOLIS - message following the October 2023 local elections

Good evening. Tonight is the beginning of the end for Mitsotakism. Mitsotakis is not New Democracy (New Democracy = the governing New Democracy party in Greece). Mitsotakism is something else. It is government by families. It is something that started with Papandreou and Karamanlis. It has to stop in this country. Mr. Angeloudis in Thessaoniki, Mr. Doukas in Athens. It is not that they won. It is that they showed with absolute clarity that people despise the candidates supported by Mitsotakis. Mitsotakis specifically. Wherever he found himself, wherever he set foot, wherever he went around, he was defeated. Whether in Thessaly with Mr. Agorastos, whether in Athens with Mr. Bakogiannis, whether in Evros. Everywhere the New Democracy candidates were smashed by rebels inside New Democracy or by some others supported by SYRIZA and KINAL .That is a tremendous personal defeat for Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who won elections three months ago because a great amount of money went to television stations. And they showed clearly that only the governing party exists because Tsipras had already failed in the years that he governed. It was something that started with Tsipras and continued with Mitsotakis.

What do we have ahead of us? This is what we have: congratulations to begin with to my friend Dimitris Kouretas, professor of biochemistry in the University of Thessaly. He is one of the people who supported me actively, he communicated with me actively in that difficult period that we went through, all together, a cultivated person, an academic who has what it takes. He won a clear victory in a Thessaly suffocated (drowned?) under the weight of Mr. Agorastos, who hasn't offered a single word of apology. None of them have.

Moving north: the Aegean, the Ionian, Evros. They were all defeated, and by whom? By themselves. By rebels from within New Democracy. By centre-right rebels. I would like very much to disagree with Mr. Kasselakis, who shows his inexperience in his mistaken assessments of many things, such as when he said that the progressive forces won. They didn't. For a start the Palaeolithic followers of Papadimoulis, of SYRIZA and the other unemployed of KINAL, who have misappropriated so much money, are not progressive forces. They aren't, and they didn't win. In some places they joined forces, and in some places people showed very clearly that they don't want any more Mitsotakis, something that exists only in this country that is called Hellas.

Nea Smyrni, or anywhere else you choose, in Halandri, where there was the well-known far rightist who said "We are not going to put up with it. If Mr Roussos becomes mayor he will have us to reckon with." All these people have been defeated totally. All of these people have brought New Democracy to an intolerable level and the average New Democracy voter has shown them that they are no longer on board with it. I'll say it again: all of Greece may be shouting that they are blue (the colour of New Democracy) but all of Greece is not with Mitsotakis. Sell-by date has arrived for Mitsotakism with its far rightists and all those it has picked up. And for a political message to SYRIZA: get yourself organized. Don't have the people that you now have inside. Change. Get people who can get their act together and be an opposition. KINAL should pay off its debts and at some point elect as leader not some unemployed person promoted by Venizelos , not someone they found in a vacant lot and gave him twenty-five thousand a month so that he could have houses when he had nothing and could not even string two sentences together essentially, and start a new active PASOK so that there can be a political alternative.

This is what we have to say to New Democracy: it is time to hold a great conference to make decisions about many things and many people. The far rightists have not led the party where it should be going. The leftists who joined the pack did not lead it where it should be going. Mitsotakis and company, Bakogiannis, a character installed by Karpenisi. was not registered as a resident of Karpenisi, Sterea Ellada: he knew nothing about Sterea Ellada. Athens: he knew nothing about Athens. He failed dismally four years later. Four years later! Hardly any mayor has lost the capital. Since 1982 New Democracy has always won in Athens. Apart from the Kaminis period. Mr. Bakogiannis managed it with that great road, making the great promenade. What was it in fact? The great bribe, as everyone knows, with the result that he was annihilated. He got 14% of the vote, and they tried very hard to ignore what it meant. Mr Mitsotakis and his pals are responsible for this defeat. And something else needs to be added, because some approach him for the sake of scoring a few crumbs from the table that they rarely have access to. At a time when more and more people are on the breadline. This is a significant time. The right conclusions must be drawn. And all that is certain is that it has been a great defeat of Mitsotakism.

Tomorrow is a new day. The parties can clean up their act. The failure of this particular party is monumental. It is monumental because it brought itself down and recovered on its own. New Democracy didn't lose. New Democrats beat Mitsotakism. And tomorrow a new day dawns in Greece. Good night.