Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and the country's political parties have condemned a recent assault on former finance minister and secretary of the left-wing MeRA25 party Yanis Varoufakis
ATHENS (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 11th March, 2023) Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and the country's political parties have condemned a recent assault on former finance minister and secretary of the left-wing MeRA25 party Yanis Varoufakis.
Varoufakis was brutally beaten and had his nose broken on Friday night at a restaurant in the Exarchia neighborhood of Athens, where he had gathered with fellow political activists from European countries.
"The attack on Mr. Varoufakis is absolutely condemnable and cannot be tolerated by our democracy. I wish him a speedy recovery and I am sure that the Greek police will make every effort to bring the perpetrators to justice," Mitsotakis said on Twitter.
The attack was also condemned by several political parties, including Greece's main opposition party, Coalition of the Radical Left - Progressive Alliance (SYRIZA), a member of which Varoufakis used to be.
"We unequivocally condemn today's attack on the secretary of MeRA25, Yanis Varoufakis. Such acts are directed against any kind of democracy," the party said on Twitter.
The Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) also spoke against the assault, with its spokesman Dimitris Mantzos tweeting that "violence � especially the one that pretends to have a 'political' content � attacks the core of our democracy."
Meanwhile, Varoufakis himself called his attackers "thugs for hire" who "clumsily invoked the lie that I sold out to the troika," namely three entities � the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund � which assessed the disbursal of financial packages to the nation during the Greek government debt crisis.
He also thanked Greek healthcare workers for treating him and expressed his support of "the spontaneous youth rallies, the greatest hope that Greece can change" following the deadly train crash that claimed the lives of 57 people last week.
Varoufakis served as finance minister in Greece's first left-wing government in January-July 2015. He was Greece's chief negotiator with the club of international creditors, and he resigned at their behest and at the request of then-Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras so as not to prevent Tsipras from negotiating with the Eurogroup.
