228 Posts in Politics

SYRIZA-Progressive Alliance had also requested a one-on-one debate between its leader Alexis Tsipras and New Democracy leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis but it was rejected by the other party representatives. Party leaders will be called to answer questions grouped into six thematic sections: economy, development and jobs; foreign policy and defense; State, institutions and transparency; health, education and the social state; environment and energy; and youth. The debate will be held ahead of the June 25 runoff elections, at the premises of national broadcaster ERT. Questions will be asked by 6 journalists and the debate will be moderated by journalist Giorgos Kouvaras, who moderated the May 10th debate, ahead of the May 21st ballot.

The European Court of Justice ruled on Monday that Poland’s 2019 justice reform infringed EU law after the European Commission, the bloc’s executive branch, claimed that the Polish Supreme Court lacked the necessary independence and impartiality. “By today’s judgment, the Court upholds the Commission’s action,” a court statement said.

Mitsotakis underlined that unity, prospects and hope won in the May 21 elections and this was a very encouraging message for the future, but he reiterated that "nothing is over. The ballot box on the morning of June 25 will be empty again. The result (of the first round) is not counted in the repeat elections. This is not a football match where we have won 4-0 and are keeping the score for the second leg. Here we are starting from the beginning and the goal is one: even higher percentages for New Democracy everywhere in Greece. And we must also win the third seat, here in Corinth. And the fourth," he said. Mitsotakis spoke about economic growth and referred to investments that can be made in Corinth in the manufacturing sector, the primary sector, tourism and the high-tech sector. "The country needs another four years of New Democracy governance to be able to permanently turn the page. To make the big leap towards Europe, to be able to maintain this high growth that we have achieved and to be sure and certain that this growth ultimately has an impact on the life of every Greek," Mitsotakis stressed and added: "That is why this election is so important. Essentially, there is just one governance proposal: only New Democracy, at this moment, can presume to win the confidence of the Greek people."

Today, it faces new challenges in the dozen hotspots where UN peacekeeping has operations, including more violent environments, fake news campaigns and a divided world that is preventing its ultimate goal: successfully restoring stable governments. The organization is marking the 75th anniversary of U.N. peacekeeping and observing the International Day of United Nations Peacekeepers on Thursday. There will be a ceremony honoring the more than 4,200 peacekeepers who have died since 1948, when a historic decision was made by the UN Security Council to send military observers to the Middle East to supervise implementation of Israeli-Arab armistice agreements. The current commander of that mission, which became the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization, will be at a Security Council meeting. In a message, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called peacekeepers “the beating heart of our commitment to a more peaceful world,” pointing to their support for communities rocked by conflict and upheavals across the globe. UN peacekeeping operations have grown dramatically. At the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s, there were 11,000 U.N. peacekeepers. By 2014, there were 130,000 in 16 far-flung peacekeeping operations. Today, 87,000 men and women serve in 12 conflict areas in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Middle East. There have been two kinds of successes, UN peacekeeping chief Jean-Pierre Lacroix said in an interview Wednesday with The Associated Press. Those are the long list of countries that have returned to a reasonable degree of stability with the support of UN peacekeeping, including Liberia, Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast, Mozambique, Angola and Cambodia, and the countries where peacekeepers are not only monitoring but preserving cease-fires like in southern Lebanon and Cyprus. As for failures, he pointed to the failure of UN peacekeepers to prevent the 1994 Rwanda genocide that killed at least 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and Hutus and the 1995 massacre of at least 8,000 mostly Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica during the war in Bosnia, Europe’s only acknowledged genocide since the Holocaust during World War II. The UN’s reputation has also been tarnished by numerous allegations that peacekeepers charged with protecting civilians sexually abused women and children, including in Central African Republic and Congo. Another high-profile blunder was the cholera epidemic in Haiti that began in 2010 after UN peacekeepers introduced the bacteria into the country’s largest river by sewage runoff from their base. Despite that, Richard Gowan, the International Crisis Group’s UN director, said “UN peacekeeping has a surprisingly decent track record.” While many people understandably focus on the Rwanda and Srebrenica disasters, he said, “the UN has done a good job of tamping down crises, protecting civilians and rebuilding broken states in cases from the Suez crisis in the 1950s to Liberia in the 2000s.”           Looking ahead, the UN’s Lacroix said the major challenge peacekeeping is facing is the divided international community and especially divisions in the UN Security Council, which must approve its missions. “The result of that is that we’re not able to achieve what I call the ultimate goal of peacekeeping — to be deployed, support a political process that moves forward, and then gradually roll down when that political process is completed,” he said. “We cannot do that because peace processes are not moving, or they’re not going fast enough.” The result is that “we have to essentially be content with what I call the intermediate goal of peacekeeping — preserving cease-fires, protecting civilians, we protect hundreds of thousands of them … and doing our best, of course, to support political efforts wherever we can,” the undersecretary-general for peace operations said. Lacroix pointed to other challenges peacekeepers are facing: The environment in which they are operating is more violent and dangerous and attacks are more sophisticated. Fake news and disinformation “is a massive threat to the population and the peacekeepers.” And old and new drivers of conflict — including transnational criminal activities, trafficking, drugs, weapons, the illegal exploitation of natural resources, and the impact of climate change exacerbating competition between herders and farmers — are also having an “absolutely massive influence.” The UN needs to better address all the challenges, he said. And it needs to keep improving the impact of peacekeeping and implement its initiatives on performance, combating fake news, improving safety and security, and recruiting more women to be peacekeepers. The Crisis Group’s Gowan told AP it’s pretty clear that the UN is “trapped” in some countries like Mali and Congo where there aren’t enough peacekeepers to halt recurring cycles of violence. Some African governments, including Mali, are turning to private security providers like Russia’s Wagner Group to fight insurgents, he said. “I think we should be wary of dumping UN operations outright,” Gowan said. “We have learned the hard way in cases like Afghanistan that even heavily armed Western forces cannot impose peace. The UN’s track record may not be perfect, but nobody else is much better at building stability in turbulent states.”

The European Commission is attempting to salvage the planned law, which would set binding targets to restore damaged natural environments – hoping to reverse the rapid decline in species and health of ecosystems across the continent. Political backlash against the proposal has mounted, however, with some governments and farming groups citing concerns about excessive red tape and the impact on farmers. French President Emmanuel Macron has suggested a pause on new EU environment legislation, while Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo questioned whether the nature law is needed. Meanwhile, the European People’s Party – EU Parliament’s largest lawmaker group – has called to reject it. EPP lawmakers on Wednesday walked out of negotiations on the law. The group said in a statement it was withdrawing from the talks because its concerns had not been addressed. “The law was poorly drafted in the first place and is an attack on European agriculture, forestry and fisheries,” EPP lawmaker Christine Schneider said in a statement. Green lawmaker Jutta Paulus, who was present in the meeting on Wednesday, said the move ignored the urgency of the ecological crisis and was “endangering our and future generations’ livelihoods”. The nature law needs approval from both EU countries and the EU Parliament, which is scheduled to vote on it in July. 2 Parliament committees have already rejected the law, signalling a tough vote in the full assembly is ahead. The proposal would require countries to introduce measures to restore nature in 20% of their land and sea. Brussels says that is crucial to help countries cope with worsening climate impacts like floods and drought, by improving the land’s ability to absorb water and avoid soil erosion. So far, EU countries have not attempted to block the proposal outright, but are negotiating amendments. These include, for example, rules to ensure they can still build wind farms and continue other economic activities in areas where nature is being restored. 

Pangalos’ family said on Twitter that he died on Wednesday “peacefully at home, surrounded by his family and close associates.” Caretaker Prime Minister Ioannis Sarmas’ office expressed condolences, as did other leading Greek politicians. A statement from Sarmas’ office praised the “dynamic and decisive” former minister who stood out for his “sharp and substantial intellect.” Born on August 17, 1938, Pangalos was the grandson of a former Greek military dictator. He studied law in Athens and economics in Paris, was involved in left-wing politics and actively opposed the new military regime of 1967-1974. He became a senior official in the Socialist Pasok party, founded by Andreas Papandreou, that dominated the political scene in most of the 1980s and 1990s, but inherited the country’s financial crisis in 2009 and gradually imploded — together with the public finances.

The decree, co-signed by caretaker Prime Minister Ioannis Sarmas, was posted on the parliament's announcements board by the Parliament Guard. It also sets the time and date when the parliament that emerges from the June 25 runoff election will convene, this being 11:00 am on Monday, July 3.

The final results of percentages, parliamentary seats and number of votes for each party are as follows: New Democracy: 40.79%, 146 seats, 2,407,860 votes Syriza-Progressive Alliance: 20.07%, 71 seats, 1,184,500 votes Pasok-Movement For Change: 11.46%, 41 seats, 676,166 votes Communist Party of Greece (KKE): 7.23%, 26 seats, 426,741 votes Greek Solution: 4.45%, 16 seats, 262,529 votes The parties that could not elect an MP account for 16.01% of votes, while the three parties that came close to passing the 3% threshold to enter parliament fared as follows: Νiki: 2.92%, 172,208 votes Plefsi Eleftherias: 2.89%, 170,298 votes MeRA25: 2.63%, 155,085 votes Parties also registered the following changes in their electoral performance compared to the 2019 national elections: New Democracy: +0.94% SYRIZA-Progressive Alliance: -11.46% PASOK-Movement For Change: +3.35% Communist Party of Greece (KKE): +1.93% Greek Solution: +0.74% Plefsi Eleftherias: +1.42% MeRA25: -0.82% The number of people registered in electoral lists totals 9,946,082. Of these, 6,061,098 voted on May 21, a 60.94% participation rate.  Valid ballots numbered 5,902,850 (97.36%), void ones 123,488 (2.04%) and blank ones 34,760 (0.57%).

No party achieved an overall majority in the election on May 21, which was held under simple proportional representation. The ruling New Democracy, with 40.79% of the vote, won 146 seats, five short of an overall majority in the 300-member chamber. The main opposition Syriza, with 20.07% - almost 11.5 points lower than in the previous election – won 71. The socialist PASOK was third. There was no attempt to form a coalition and the leaders of the three main parties returned their mandates to form a government almost as soon as they got them. A constitutionally mandated meeting on Wednesday with President Katerina Sakellaropoulou and all five leaders of the parties represented in parliament merely confirmed that a second election would take place. A caretaker government headed by a senior judge was sworn in Thursday.

“I wish you all success in your work. I called you here because I wanted to provide you with some directions as you assume your ministries, in preparation for Saturday’s regular cabinet meeting,” said Sarmas, a senior judge, at the beginning of his address at the Maximos Mansion. Regarding Saturday’s session, he said, “It will define the government’s policies, which are intended for the upcoming few weeks.” “Our government is an interim government led by one of the presidents of the three highest courts. The essence of the judicial function is independence and impartiality. This means that the aim of the Constitution is [to establish] an independent, politically and party-neutral government. This is our primary duty,” he said.           “We must maintain neutrality, impartiality, and objectivity. We need to carefully consider the consequences of our actions, ensuring they are not perceived as favoring or opposing any political faction in the upcoming electoral campaign,” he said. The customary handover ceremonies of the ministries will take place later in the day.

The key ministries of Defense and Foreign Affairs will be headed respectively by former chief of the Army General Staff and former Deputy Minister, General Alkiviadis Stefanis, and Ambassador (ret.) Vassilis Kaskarelis. Former chief of Army General Staff, General Charalambos Lalousis, will head the Citizen Protection Ministry, while journalist Ilias Siakantaris will take over as government spokesperson. The new cabinet will be sworn in before Hellenic Republic President Katerina Sakellaropoulou and newly appointed Hellenic Prime Minister Ioannis Sarmas at 12:00 on Friday (May 26th). Moreover, Outgoing Foreign Affairs Minister Nikos will hand over the ministry portfolio to caretaker minister Ambassador Vassilis Kaskarelis at 13:00 on Friday. The hand over will be preceded by the swearing-in ceremony of the entire caretaker cabinet at 12:00 noon, in the presence of President of the Rebuplic Katerina Sakellaropoulou and caretaker Prime Minister Ioannis Sarmas.   THE NEW CABINET   Prime Minister: Ioannis Sarmas State Minister: Vasilios Skouris Finance Minister: Theodoros Pelagidis Development and Investments Minister: Eleni Louri Foreign Affairs Minister: Vasilios Kaskarelis National Defense Minister: Alkiviadis Stefanis Education and Religion Minister: Christos Kittas Labor and Social Affairs Minister: Patrina Paparrigopoulou Health Minister: Anastasia Kotanidou Environment and Energy Minister: Pantelis Kapros Citizen Protection Minister: Charalambos Lalousis Culture and Sports Minister: George Koumentakis Justice Minister: Filippos Spyropoulos Interior Minister: Kalliopi Spanou Migration and Asylum Minister: Daniil Esdras Digital Governance Minister: Sokratis Katsikas Infrastructure and Transport Minister: Yiannis Golias Shipping and Island Policy Minister: Theodoros Kliaris Agricultural Development and Foods Minister: Georgios Tsakiris Tourism Minister: Ioanna Dretta Climate Crisis and Civil Protection Minister: Evangelos Tournas Government spokesperson: Ilias Siakantaris (Updated to add Infrastructure minister)

Sarmas, 66, will be sworn in Thursday and lead a caretaker government until a new election next month, according to government officials. The vote is widely expected to be held on June 25 but has not been formally confirmed. His appointment was announced after the conservative New Democracy party of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis won a landslide victory in a general election Sunday, beating his left-wing opponents by 20 percentage points but falling short of a parliamentary majority. Next month’s election will take place under a different system which boosts the winning party. Mitsotakis and the leaders of four other political parties represented in parliament held a joint meeting Wednesday with President Katerina Sakellaropoulou to discuss arrangements for the upcoming election.