Tsipras: We want foreign investors, not pirates

SYRIZA president Alexis Tsipras launched an attack in parliament against the government's policy that destroys and drives off development investments.

The leader of the opposition pointed out that the rural struggle is the struggle for development and that the problems of the rural world today are a matter of life and death for the Greek countryside.

During the parliamentary debate on rural issues, Tsipras said the collapse of the agricultural sector is not a matter of the memorandum, but it’s been part of the Greek reality and was not an accident, but a deliberate political choice.

As he said, the powerful economic centers felt that the rural sector is unnecessary and that growth will come through loans and not the primary sector. He criticized the previous governments of PASOK and ND for accepting, as he said, all the disastrous orders imposed on the country through the Common Agricultural Policy.

Referring to development, he addressed the government and the prime minister, calling on them to answer the question whether in this country we want to have only primary production or just services and real estate.

Continuing, he attacked the government. "They talk about developing, those who have removed any prospect of development in this place, those whose measures caused recession, unemployment, and all they are developing is a policy against development."

He described the prime minister as the "natural and moral instigator of the policy that leads to non-development and the struggle of the people."

Referring to the positions of SYRIZA, he asked that we as a country count on our own powers and emphasized that the restructuring of the agricultural sector is of strategic importance.

Responding to the criticism he has been receiving, he said the country needs investments but "we need actual investors, not pirates."

More specifically, he charged that licenses for renewable energy "went to their people."

"We are talking about productive development, not about plundering against the public interest. We propose to restore the minimum wage and minimum pension to their previous levels. We propose to respond to the demands of farmers," he said and accused the government and Samaras of the fact that in the name of growth, what they actually developed "is unemployment, poverty, repression and the strangulation of the welfare state."