Polakis to face Parliament’s ethics committee after battle royal with Georgiadis, who will sue him

Parliament Speaker Kostas Tasoulas has referred SYRIZA MP Pavlos Polakis to the legislature's Ethics Committee in the latest episode in the vendetta between the SYRIZA MP and Development Minister and New Democracy vice-president Adonis Georgiadis over charges that the latter as health minister received kickbacks from the pharmaceutical giant Novartis.

The tumult came just days after the Greece judiciary shelved Georgiadis' case for lack of evidence. Georgiadis submitted to Parliament the judiciary's report regarding the shelving of the case, declaring that it is a "hymn" to his tenure as minister.

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis during the weekend debate on SYRIZA'a failed no confidence motion demanded that SYRIZA apologise for its false accusation against top ND cadres, including former PM Antonis Samaras.

'Leader of the anti-vaxxers'

Because of Polakis ambiguous position on the safety of COVID-19 vaccines, Mitsotakis called SYRIZA's former alternate health minister the leader of Greece's anti-vaxxers.

Polakis, a surgeon, delayed being vaccinated until September, supposedly due to concerns over the safety of COVID vaccines, and only after being pressured by former PM and main opposition SYRIZA leader Alexis Tsipras.

The ruling party and a number of political analysts have said that Polakis' stance was designed, with Tsipras' blessings, to lure anti-vaxxers to the SYRIZA camp.

During yesterday's debate on the government's economic development bill, Polakis took the podium for nearly an hour, during which he unleashed a vitriolic attack against Georgiadis, and refused repeated calls from the parliament's deputy speaker who was chairing the session - who in the end postponed the debate until today - that...