Bakoyannis rejects Samaras’ criticism of the government

Dora Bakoyannis, a former minister, prominent parliamentarian and member of the ruling New Democracy party, dismissed Monday’s withering comments against the government by former conservative Prime Minister Antonis Samaras as reactionary and sarcastic.

“Mr. Samaras expressed his personal bitterness over the fact that others did not want to ‘play’ with him; that is my conclusion from his speech,” Bakoyannis, who is also the sister of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, told Skai TV on Tuesday morning, hours after Samaras and another former conservative prime minister, Kostas Karamanlis, attended a book launch in Athens where they gave the government a thrashing.

“They made two completely different speeches. Karamanlis gave us an analysis of Europe and national issues, issues we all agree on,” Boakoyannis said Tuesday, reserving most of her reactions to Samaras.

The former prime minister, who ruled the country from 2012 to 2015 and from 2009 to 2015 for the centre-right New Democracy party and is considered an influential voice in its far-conservative faction, was particularly outspoken on Monday evening, accusing the prime minister and his government of leading the party away from its core values, failing to heed the demands of its grassroots supporters and mismanaging important foreign policy issues.

He described New Democracy’s worse-than-expected performance in last month’s European Parliament election as a “brutal slap in the face” and accused Mitsotakis of making the party “the smallest and most phobic it has ever been”.

“Saying that ND, with 41% (of the national vote) and 156 MPs, is a small and phobic party when we have surpassed the 18% of the Samaras years… one really needs to be moderate in what one claims,” Bakoyannis responded in her comments on Tuesday.

“I don’t hear the things Samaras is saying from the party base. Has ND strayed from its principles and values? It’s ridiculous,” she said. “Look at the ND’s founding declaration from 50 years ago; it could have been written yesterday. That’s the declaration that the Mitsotakis government is following: liberalism and social sensitivity.”

On liberal social policies, Samaras was particularly critical of the prime minister’s decision to legalise same-sex marriage and adoption, saying he had ignored warnings from the party majority and Samaras himself.

“If the government treats even the former prime minister and president (of the party) this way, why shouldn’t people consider you arrogant, gentlemen?” Samaras said in his speech at the book launch at the War Museum in Athens on Monday evening.

“New Democracy has always won when it had the support of the center,” Bakoyannis said in an interview with Skai on Tuesday, responding to Samaras’ suggestions about the direction in which Mitsotakis intended to lead the party.