ND must remain open to cooperation with democratic arc forces, ND's Asimakopoulou

Gazzetta team 4 Σεπτεμβρίου 2015 - 18:55

New Democracy "must do what it has always done" and remain open to cooperation and dialogue with all the forces of the democratic arc, regardless of whether it has a majority in Parliament or not, ND sector-head for fiscal policy Anna-Michel Asimakopoulou said on Friday.

Talking to the ANA-MPA radio station 'Praktorio 104.9', she also accused SYRIZA of seeking to perpetuate clientelism in the public sector:

"There are two ways of looking at public sector reform - through the prism of vote-catching and one's party clientele, as SYRIZA did, or through meritocracy and evaluation, as we want," she said.

Where the Samaras government had tried to tackle the issue of corrupt public-sector staff, SYRIZA simply returned its "clients" to their jobs, she added.

"This does not mean that its clients were all useless, no one said that," she said, noting that some injustices perpetrated through the policies adopted by the Samaras government were due to an obligation to meet quantitative targets and a lack of proper planning.

She criticised the SYRIZA-ANEL government's handling of the negotiations with the creditors, however, saying it might have secured better terms than the Hardouvelis e-mail if it had struck a deal sooner.