Former Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis will send a response letter next week regarding his summoning by the Parliament Inquiry Committee investigating the Batopedi case. GCP, LAOS and SYRIZA political parties have strongly reacted to this development insisting on his personal presence. However this will not be discussed as the majority of the Committee’s members render as significant; the fact that the former Prime Minister honours the Committee with his letter.
The President of the Inquiry Committee Dimitris Tsironis said: “we prefered his personal presence, but he did not allow for any alternative, he was determined to send a letter”. In response to criticism on the content of the letter, Tsironis underlined that nothing would have changed either if the content of the letter had been differently expressed. “It was a regular summoning within a spirit of respect to a figure that served in the country’s highest post”.
Reports say that the former leader in his letter, will repeat his known positions he expressed in public when he was in office. At a meeting of his party’s Parliamentary Group in December 2008, Karamanlis admitted: “it was a scandalous case which he had initially underrated and delayed to realize its dimensions”.
Next Wednesday former ministers Thodoros Roussopoulos and George Boulgarakis are to appear before the Parliament Inquiry Committee looking into the Batopedi case. Statements by head monk Efrem and monk Arsenios will precede on Tuesday, while former ministers Alexandros Kontos and Evagelos Basiakos have been summoned to testify on Thursday. In another development, LAOS granted a request to summon former Prime Minister Kostas Simitis as a witness.
(source: net)
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