Ag minister resigns after sharp reprimand by PM Mitsotakis

Greece’s agriculture minister tendered his resignation on Monday after being sharply reprimanded by Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis over his nonchalant reaction to cynical and swaggering statements by the mayor of the city of Sparta during a meeting, where the latter claimed the then Karamanlis government in 2007 won a snap election by quickly doling out monetary damages for a string of deadly wildfires that devastated Ilia prefecture that summer.

Forty-nine people died as a result of the wildfires in that prefecture, in southwest Greece and in the northwest of the Peloponnese province, during the summer of 2007, with the then center-right government under Costas Karamanlis coming under intense criticism.

The exchange between now resigned minister Spilios Livanos and Sparta Mayor Petros Doukas, a long-time cadre of ruling New Democracy (ND) party and deputy FinMin in 2007, was broadcast live last Tuesday via Facebook by a local website in Laconia prefecture, where Sparta is the capital. The meeting focused on crop damages incurred this season by local farmers due to the snowfall and frost.

In the footage, Doukas is shown saying that “… as I remember, we (the government) had gone to Ilia because of the wildfires at the time; that’s how we won in 2007; we had gone down there with bags (of money) in order to pay damages … We essentially turned the game around. At a point and time when we were trailing (the main opposition party) by 15 (percentage points) and looking at a disaster, we went there and with two moves turned the entire game around.”

In a reaction that subsequently generated Mitsotakis’ ire and caused embarrasment for the current ND government, Livanos merely responded by saying “…This is something we must answer for; you’ve gone down in history because of what you did there (Ilia) … and we’re lacking by comparison, since then, to what you accomplished in that epic (development),” a reaction that generated laughter from those in attendance.

When the dialogue surfaced on Monday, Mitsotakis first contacted the minister, with his office subsequently releasing details regarding the furor and the latter’s resignation.
“His (Livanos) reaction should have been different, something he acknowledged by tendering his resignation,” were reportedly the words used by Mitsotakis.