George Papandreou, Greece's prime minister from 2009 to 2011, said Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis could not erase New Democracy's responsibility for the country's 2010 financial collapse by visiting the island of Kastellorizo. Papandreou said Mitsotakis had gone to Kastellorizo to "close a cycle," but that the cycle had opened because of his own party's failures, and that when Greece fought its biggest battle, New Democracy had stood on the opposite side.
He said Mitsotakis speaks of unity today but was deafeningly absent during the most critical moments for Hellenism.
Papandreou Questions Mitsotakis's Understanding of Kastellorizo
Papandreou asked whether, sixteen years on, Mitsotakis had understood the national and geopolitical significance of Kastellorizo, and whether he understood the agonizing moments Greece lived through at that time. Kastellorizo is a small, remote Greek island lying close to the Turkish coast that has long carried symbolic weight in Greek-Turkish relations.
Papandreou said 2010 marked the start of a national effort to change the country and confront the deep crisis that struck Greece and shook Europe.
2010 Crisis and New Democracy's Responsibility
He said the crisis had not come from nowhere but was directly the result of New Democracy's governance under Costas Karamanlis, who served as prime minister before Papandreou, and that this governance had brought the country to the edge of bankruptcy. By contrast, he said, his own PASOK government had put the national interest first and shouldered the heavy political burden of extremely difficult decisions.
He said PASOK fought at the time to secure the only available solution to keep the country standing, while Mitsotakis's party competed with Alexis Tsipras's SYRIZA party in rallying against the bailout memorandum in the country's squares.
Calls for New Democracy to Change
Papandreou said New Democracy now boasts of a Greece that escaped the spiral of deficits but reproduces the same practices that led to the crisis. He said it was not the image of the always-beautiful Kastellorizo that had embittered Greeks, but the deficit, debt and unreliability of the country, which brought dependencies and hardships that people continue to pay for dearly for the benefit of New Democracy and a few powerful interests.
He said it is not the image of Kastellorizo that should now be forgotten. Instead, he said, it must remain vivid to remind people which practices and attitudes of New Democracy, then and now, need to change, naming clientelism and social injustice, lack of transparency and corruption, over-centralization of power, its possession and appropriation by a few, and kleptocracy and favoritism for the benefit of a small group. He said responsibilities are not erased.
Papandreou said uprooting these pathologies requires political courage and real political will, which he said New Democracy did not have then and does not have now. He said a cycle cannot be closed with communication tricks but only by taking responsibility, adding that history cannot be rewritten and responsibilities cannot be erased.
