PM Alexis Tsipras and leader of the main opposition party New Democracy, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, clashed in Parliament over the issue of law and order in Greek higher education institutions.
The university in its current form must be abolished as it has turned into an “asylum of delinquency, violence and lawlessness,” Mitsotakis charged in his speech on Friday.
The leader of New Democracy claimed that criminal groups have infiltrated the universities, and these groups have turned the universities into safe houses and home bases.
Addressing the Prime Minister, Mitsotakis said that all the professors and the students who can’t move freely in the schools unofficially support his position, and he needs to answer to them.
“SYRIZA … can’t address the violence and the lawlessness. It is not the students’ job to clash with drug dealers in order to protect the ‘asylum’ from police’s interventions,” he added.
Tsipras for his part focused on what he alleges is the opposition’s secret agenda to defame public universities.
“We can’t defame the public university for our political interest. It is (ND’s) ideological obsession to highlight the issue of the private universities. You have selective memory,” said Tsipras.
He referred to the UN Drugs Committee report, according to which the only way to tackle the trafficking of drugs everywhere in the world, including the universities, is the coordinated implementation of policies against the demand.
Addressing Mitsotakis, the prime minister said “Only you, in all over the world, believe that the repressive and violent operation are enough to eliminate the phenomenon like magic.”
With information from the Athens-Macedonian News Agency
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