Outspoken former Parliament president Zoe Konstantopoulou unleashed a harsh attack against the Tsipras government over the weekend, referring to a “undemocratic, authoritarian regime”.
Konstantopoulou is a high-profile leftist politician who quit the ruling SYRIZA party before the September 2015 snap election only to subsequently found her own political grouping. She failed to get elected in that election, while in the previous January 2015 election she emerged as one of SYRIZA’s most popular deputies.
“In my view we’re living in a dictatorship,” she told Athens broadcaster Skai.
She also had venomous words for Greek President Prokopis Pavlopoulos, who was elected by a Parliament majority to the mostly ceremonial post as compromise candidate, and only after a previous candidate, Stavros Dimas, was rejected by most of the then opposition in early January 2015.
The Dimas result was a snap election, which SYRIZA subsequently won, beating incumbent Antonis Samaras and the latter’s center-right New Democracy party.
She took aim at Pavlopoulos’ most recent reaction -- usually given before television cameras -- to inflammatory statements by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
“There should be moderation in his (Pavlopoulos’) statements, as he’s amid traitors and the protagonists of our country’s downgrading and democracy”.
