PM to take on rivals in spyware affair
Mitsotakis will submit espionage reform bill, wants case resolved ahead of next year’s polls
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, faced with responding to the persistent and expanding surveillance scandal, with new allegations about officials and others targeted with spyware, has made four main decisions.
He will not accept proposals even by close aides for going to the polls earlier than he has planned next year. He will not resort to actions, such as demanding a vote of confidence in Parliament, that will show the government as being on the defensive. He will refuse to follow opposition leader Alexis Tsipras, with whom he is set to clash in Parliament soon, in debating allegations about the surveillance of specific individuals, since no concrete evidence about them has emerged, thus far. He will respond by submitting and bringing to a vote a draft bill on reforming the National Intelligence Agency (EYP). As has already become known, the bill will include a provision banning the sale and use of spyware, a first in the EU.
Government officials have told Kathimerini that the new EYP director, Themistoklis Demiris, has investigated, in the three months in his new post, and has found no evidence that it possessed or used the Israeli-made Predator software or paid third parties for their services using the spyware. The EYP director has concluded that any use targeting Greek citizens was initiated by private individuals or unspecified “third parties.”
These conclusions will give Mitsotakis the chance to declare, once more, that continuing talk about surveillance is mainly aimed at increasing polarization ahead of next year’s elections.
Mitsotakis will also call opposition parties to debate his EYP reform proposals and submit their own, if they have alternatives, instead of spending their time denouncing him and the government.
Mitsotakis will not yet reveal the timing of the likely double election. His term expires in July 2023, but any date beyond mid-April is likely, according to officials. If there is a double election, there must be a gap of at least four weeks between the two, during which there will be a caretaker government in place.
What is excluded is going to the polls with the surveillance affair still high on the agenda.
Mitsotakis would like to go to the polls emphasizing his two preferred themes: Will the country continue moving forward or will it backslide? And which one do voters prefer to lead them, Tsipras or himself?
