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| ND MP and Parliament Speaker Kostas Tasoulas. |
With a record 283 votes New Democracy's (ND) veteran MP and former Culture and Sports Minister, Konstantinos Tasoulas, was elected earlier today as the new Speaker of the Greek Parliament.
A long-time MP for the district of Ioannina, Tasoulas was approved by New Democracy, main opposition SYRIZA, centre-left Movement for Change (KINAL/PASOK), the far-right Greek Solution and Varoufakis' MERA25.
The only exception were the 15 deputies of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) who voted "present".
In 2017, during a speech in the Parliament, Tasoulas had unleashed a disgraceful anti-communist attack while refering to the executed - by the bourgeois state - communist hero Nikos Beloyannis. Back then, Tasoulas had said:
"It has been heard here that Beloyannis fought for democracy. I disagree. His death was very hard. The death penalty is a very hard act. But, in the name of a very harsh act which everyone can judge whether or not it was fair or unfair, we cannot believe that the intention to enforce a communist dictatorship consists an act in favor of democracy. If the other party (TN: "the communists") had prevailed in our country, I wouldn't be allowed not just to say that, but not even to thing about that".
For those who know the case of Beloyannis, his life and heroic activity as a member of the Central Committee of the KKE, as a fighter of the anti-fascist EAM-ELAS resistance eppopie and his subsequent conviction to death by the bourgeois Greek state, the words of Tasoulas consist a cheap reproduction of anti-communist slanders.
The above speech given by Tasoulas in the Greek Parliament consists a monument of bourgeois hypocrisy and an anti-communist distortion of history.
What is important, however, isn't Tasoulas' anti-communism. The interesting fact is that two supposedly left parties - SYRIZA and MERA25 - voted in favor of Tasoulas' election as Parliament Speaker. The left and progressive people, both in Greece and abroad, can and must draw conclusions from this stance.
