From fighting each other, the ruling conservative New Democracy party and the socialist PASOK – the parliamentary main opposition – have both turned on Greek Left Alliance (ELAS), the party recently founded by former prime minister Alexis Tsipras, questioning the transparency of its financing.
But it was ELAS that started the latest round of recriminations by referring to the heavy debts carried by both ND (€602.1 million) and PASOK (€565.1 million), almost all in the form of bank loans. ELAS said both the two biggest parties are beholden to banks and only exist because of those loans.
PASOK was the first to respond, and did not hold back. It replied that it has not taken any new loan since 2010 and that, after agreement with its creditors, it is repaying those loans on schedule.
Government spokesman Pavlos Marinakis followed Friday, saying in a radio interview that ND “has not borrowed a single euro” ever since Kyriakos Mitsotakis was elected party leader in January 2016. “It is too much for a party, whose leader, when he was prime minister, saddled the Greek taxpayers with an extra €100-120 billion,” Marinakis said, referring to the third loan package that Tsipras was forced to sign with the country’s creditors after unsuccessfully trying to force them to drop their demand for strict austerity policies in 2015.
