SYRIZA says Varvitsiotis’ resignation came with a ‘six-day delay’
Greece’s main opposition said on Monday that the former shipping minister Miltiadis Varvitsiotis’ resignation over his mishandling of the death of a ferry passenger in Piraeus came “with a six-day delay.”
Varvitsiotis resigned claiming he had become the target of “an attack that is acquiring more and more toxic characteristics.”
Last week, a video on social media showed a crewman shoving a 36-year-old man off the loading ramp of a ferry into the sea. The now-former minister said, “Today, there are people mourning the unjustly lost; but the families of those who went to earn a wage, a day’s pay, and are now being accused of murder, are also mourning.”
“Mr. Varvitsiotis decided to demonstrate a minimum of decency and resign as shipping minister with a six-day delay after his heartless statement, in which he equated the perpetrators with Antonis Karyiotis, the victim of the murder at Piraeus port,” SYRIZA said in a press release.
“Varvitsiotis first accused SYRIZA of exploiting the incident politically and then, after we demanded his removal, hypocritically apologised and today, finally, he resigned under the weight of the social outcry. Just two months after the general elections, the ministers of the Mitsotakis government are resigning, one after the other, proving that it is already a government in state of disintegration,” it added.
Varvitsiotis is replaced by Christos Stylianidis, who served as Climate Crisis and Civil Protection Minister in the previous government of Kyriakos Mitsotakis.
