Greek government survives no-confidence vote over 2023 train inferno
Source: NEOS KOSMOS
Greece’s parliament on Friday rejected a no-confidence motion brought against Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis’s government over its handling of the country’s worst rail disaster in 2023.
Following days of acrimonious debates and mass protests, the chamber’s deputies voted against the motion, brought by the main opposition socialist Pasok party, by 157 to 136 lawmakers.
On Wednesday, about 8,000 people gathered in front of parliament and more than 300,000 people across the country took part in demonstrations last week to mark the second anniversary of the train crash in which 57 people died.
Friday afternoon saw further demonstrations as more than 3,000 students and young people, according to a police estimate, gathered in central Athens, with the city centre closed to traffic.
“No cover-up”, said one banner. “To breathe, we will overthrow them” declared another.
Communist union Pame also called for a march later Friday.
Police dispersed previous demonstrations with tear gas and stun grenades after protesters set fire to bins and threw firebombs.
The rail disaster occurred on February 28, 2023, when a train from Athens to Thessaloniki carrying more than 350 passengers collided with a freight train in Tempi, central Greece.
The two trains ran towards each other on the same track for miles without triggering alarms. The accident was blamed on faulty equipment and human error.
Controversy
With Mitsotakis’s conservative New Democracy holding 156 of the parliament’s 300 seats, the motion had little likelihood of passing.
Socialist Pasok party leader Nikos Androulakis said he had filed the censure because of what he called the centre-right government’s “criminal incompetence”.
Opinion polls show a large majority of Greeks believe the government tried to cover up evidence over the cause of the crash.
On Tuesday, parliament voted to launch an investigation into whether a senior official, dispatched to the scene by Mitsotakis, authorised the bulldozing of the crash site, leading to the loss of vital evidence.
Last week, Greece’s state aviation and railway safety investigation agency said there was a “possible presence” of an “unknown fuel” at the scene which killed some survivors of the collision by triggering an “enormous ball of fire”.
More than 40 people have been prosecuted, including a local station master responsible for routing the trains, who has been charged with “homicide due to negligence”.
Division
The government survived one censure motion last year.
On Wednesday, Mitsotakis said “there never was” a cover-up and dismissed the claims as a “colourful collection of myths, fantasies and lies”.
But he acknowledged “chronic shortcomings by the state” combined with “fatal human errors” that caused the tragedy.
Rival party leaders said the government had ignored repeated signs and warnings that Greece’s railways were chronically underfunded and accident-prone.
Alluding to the protests calling for “justice”, Mitsotakis called for Greeks to be wary of the “people’s court” and to trust the law.
“Two years after the trauma of Tempi, we are still in mourning but some circles are trying to use it to create division,” he said.
He added he was confident in defeating the no-confidence vote, thanks to his “firmly united parliamentary group”.
Source: Agence France-Presse
The original article: belongs to NEOS KOSMOS .
