Socialism in Greece

"April may determine what the future will look like," Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said on Thursday during a discussion in Parliament in Athens on new legislative measures to contain the impact of the coronavirus epidemic.

"Everything that has been done so far has brought reservedly optimistic results," he said, warning that the country needs to stay the course.

Politicians from across the spectrum paid homage to Manolis Glezos, the veteran leftist and resistance fighter who died at the age of 98.

Veteran leftist and resistance fighter Manolis Glezos has died at the age of 98. 

He died of heart failure, according to reports.

An active opponent of Greece's resistance to the Nazis, Glezos is best known for tearing down the Nazi flag from the Acropolis in 1941 as occupying German forces conquered Athens. 

The government has said it will expand its stimulus package to more sectors of the economy battered by the state-decreed suspension of the activity of businesses to halt the spread of the Ccoronavirus.

In a message on the anniversary of the 1821 uprising against Ottoman rule, leftist opposition leader Alexis Tsipras issued a call for unity in the face of Turkish provocations against Greece's territorial integrity.

There is a social class dimension to the way the new coronavirus is affecting the population, and by that of course I do not mean the indirect revanchism of MEP Dimitris Papadimoulis, of the main opposition SYRIZA party, who almost celebrated the fact that the outbreak in our country started from a woman who returned from a trip to Milan and a student in a private school in Athens.

While the international community is fighting Covid-19, a new challenge is emerging: how to defend against potential cyberattacks. Politicians, including in Greece, find themselves having to replace their face-to-face meetings with phone or video calls.

Greece's leftist opposition has urged the government to take immediate measures to decongest the eastern Aegean islands, where thousands of asylum-seekers are stranded, and to transfer vulnerable people to the mainland.
Failure to do so, SYRIZA said on Sunday, will increase the risk of confrontation between Greek citizens and police forces, as well as of violence against refugees.

Greek lawmakers started debating on Tuesday evening a social security bill, which Labor Minister Yiannis Vroutsis describing it as a "watershed" law that will affect current and future generations. 

Earlier, the minister tabled an accompanying actuarial report which he said "proves the [draft] law's viability until 2070."

It goes without saying that the political opposition has an institutional obligation to keep the government in check.

SYRIZA's latest video campaign against Greece's seven-month-old conservative administration is a legitimate move, even if it occasionally resorts to half-truths and cheap populism, like when it misrepresents the prime minister's diplomatic activity as tourism.