Gov’t ‘accepts’ opposition’s challenge of a no confidence motion

The government accepts the challenge of a motion of no confidence by opposition parties, spokesman Pavlos Marinakis said Sunday.

Earlier, socialist PASOK leader Nikos Androulakis had called on “the parties of the democratic spectrum” to deposit a joint motion of no confidence in Parliament, based on a front-page article in Sunday newspaper “To Vima” claiming that conversations between the Larissa station master – the one closest to the site of the Tempe train crash – the trains’ drivers and other persons had been stitched together and offered to pro-government media to give the impression the deadly accident was due exclusively to human error.

Government sources have replied that the investigating authorities have complete sets of recordings from the night in question. They also argue that the paper’s revelation is not new, as a few days after the train crash, some media outlets – including state broadcaster ERT and To Vima publishing company’s own website – already revealed that the transcripts involved conversations with another person and not just between the stationmaster and driver.

“The masks have fallen,” Marinakis said, implying that Androulakis and To Vima had coordinated their moves.

Left-wing SYRIZA, the New Left party and the right-wing Greek Solution have said they will back the no confidence motion. So will the Communist Party, “with its own rationale,” it said in a statement in which it attacked Androulakis and his party for essentially supporting the policies of the ruling New Democracy’s policy.

But even if the remaining parliamentary parties – far-right Niki and the Spartiates (Spartans) and left-leaning Course for Freedom – join in support, their combined forces of 142 MPs in the 300-member Parliament are not enough to pass the motion.