Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and PASOK leader Nikos Androulakis are set for a confrontation in Parliament on Friday, in an exchange framed around the cost of living but widely expected to range much wider.
Barring last-minute changes, Mitsotakis will answer a question submitted by Androulakis, on the surge in everyday prices that has come to dominate Greek politics. Current questions are a standing parliamentary mechanism that lets an opposition leader put the prime minister on the spot in the chamber.
Few in Athens expect the debate to stay within those limits. It falls in a week crowded with developments in the country’s long-running surveillance scandal, the wiretapping affair centered on the Predator spyware used to target politicians and journalists.
Former Prime Minister Antonis Samaras has taken the matter to the Supreme Court, asking for a “full investigation” into how he was targeted with Predator. Two days before Friday’s exchange, on Wednesday, Parliament’s Committee on Institutions and Transparency is due to meet to decide whether to summon Intellexa founder Tal Dilian and former secretary general to the prime minister and nephew of Kyriakos Mitsotakis Grigoris Dimitriadis, two figures at the center of the affair.
PASOK moved quickly to capitalize on Samaras’s move against the government. The party said the former premier had only belatedly carried out what it called his “self-evident duty,” while using the moment to needle the Maximos Mansion, the prime minister’s office.
The convergence sets up Friday’s session to double as a proxy fight over the surveillance scandal, even with prices at the top of the formal agenda.
