Sokratis Famellos / The draft law on private universities is a flagrant violation of the Constitution

“The Government is not promoting a bill for non-state universities. The Government is promoting a bill to unconstitutionally give academic recognition to the colleges it has supported for the past four and a half years and further degrade the public university. We are in a very bad moment in our country, where the Government wants to proceed with a blatant violation of the Constitution. The Constitution explicitly provides that the Universities of our country can only be public, the professors in them are only public officials and this is because Education is a social good. The Government and Mr. Mitsotakis have been claiming for many years that article 16 should be amended in order to create private universities. Now that article 16 has not been changed, I wonder how they will achieve this?”, stressed the President of the Parliamentary Group of SYRIZA-Progressive Alliance, Sokratis Famellos speaking on the First Program of Hellenic Radio.

Commenting on the government’s arguments, he added that “Branches of foreign universities have existed in Greece for many years, in the form of colleges, with professional rights but without academic recognition. Very serious collaborations between foreign universities and Greek public universities take place as long as the institutional framework exists. So both arguments are excuses. The Government does not want to upgrade public universities. Unfortunately our country has the lowest teaching to student and funding ratios in Europe in universities. We are in the last places in Europe. According to a recent calculation, University funding has decreased by 70%, in fact the National Technical University itself has announced that it is working with 60% less resources. So we are not talking about an intervention by the Government to help Education and our children. And in fact Mr. Pierrakakis is proceeding with the regulation, in the light of modernization, to help those who have colleges. He is making an intervention so that some can make a profit in Education”.
Asked about the agricultural mobilizations, Sokratis Famellos pointed out “Tensions in society are not created because someone mobilizes to live. That is, the tensions are not created by the students who protect the public University. Its tensions are created by the Government which affects the University. The tensions are not caused by farmers, who are demanding cheaper electricity and cheaper fuel. The tensions were caused by Mr. Mitsotakis, who allowed excess profits to exist in electricity and fuel. And since the government says it will scrape the “bottom of the barrel”, I think they scraped it in previous years to make some super profits. This is the problem. That is, a recent example is the profits of the country’s two refineries for 2022 which reached 3 billion euros. The excess profits, i.e. the unfair profits from them, based on the Commission’s regulations, are 2.6 billion euros! This is the bottom of the barrel scraped by Mr. Mitsotakis so that a few can make money. The criterion is seen in the question for whom are you scraping the bottom of the barrel. Mr. Mitsotakis has not scratched the bottom of the barrel for farmers, as well as for professionals, pensioners, and employees. For a few who have vested interests and guide him or support them he has scraped the bottom of the barrel.”

“There is only one solution: To limit the profits of electricity companies and the profits of refineries and companies that sell fertilizers. This is what farmers want in order to have low prices and, by extension, to have low prices on the shelf for consumers.”

Regarding the forms of the mobilizations, he commented: “Each social class finds a way to claim. I am in favor of asserting the demands of the citizens, I am not in favor of settling the diaries. We have to do something. If the Government is not listening, it must listen. Obviously there must be a democratic way in the development of the struggles but we cannot tell the citizens to sit at home and live their poverty. We live in a democratic society. Because the Democracy in our country was conquered with mobilizations”.

“A big problem in accuracy is the super profits, the obscene profit”

Referring to the SYRIZA plan for precision and the campaign for precision, the President of K.O. of SYRIZA underlined “The analysis we have done shows that a big problem in accuracy is the excess profits, that is, the obscene profit in the market. Business profits have a large percentage, many times more than 50%, of inflation. This means that there must be a drastic intervention in business profits. For example, we recommend two measures for electricity. One is the maximum rate of profit at 5%. This means that in the wholesale electricity market, what is also called pre-day, no transaction will be allowed in which the producer earns more than 5% of the production cost. This is an example that also corresponds to the refineries, where there we had the refining margin, that is, the profit per barrel, to triple and quadruple in 2022. Here there could be a corresponding limitation. When you have PPC and Hellenic Petroleum which are two pillars of the energy market, the Government can intervene in two ways: One is to prevent the companies themselves from profiteering, because the Government as a shareholder is profiteering at the expense of consumers and the second to control the market and therefore the rate of profit. So in addition to control mechanisms we could have interference with profits. Our campaign slogan is: Reduce profits so we can have more food in our basket and limit the profits of the few so that the many can have better product prices.”

Asked to comment on the passing of the bill for marriage equality and the differentiation of 52 ND MPs, Sokratis Famellos said “New Democracy could not pass this bill alone. It had 52 MPs who opposed Mr. Mitsotakis. The bill had features of reform, it corresponded to what we call constitutional imperatives, the rule of law, the European acquis, but 52 ND MPs, including four Ministers and Deputy Ministers, refused to vote for it. The political problem that Mr. Mitsotakis has today is huge. ND MPs opposed something that is constitutionally mandatory, so they opposed the rule of equality. We heard some far-right rhetoric from Mr. Samaras. The question is why Mr. Mitsotakis keeps within his party such extreme voices that oppose, according to what Mr. Skertsos also said, the constitutional principles of the Constitution? How can a party have a large far-right component that now also expresses itself in the cabinet and is legitimized not to vote on bills?” concluded the president of K.O. of SYRIZA.