Parliament rejects main opposition bid for wiretapping scandal inquiry

A connection by the main absorption PASOK enactment to motorboat a parliamentary enquiry into a wiretapping ungraded was rejected successful Parliament Friday aft failing to unafraid the required implicit bulk of 151 votes.

In the 300-member chamber, 161 MPs were contiguous for the nominal roll-call vote. The connection was defeated with 155 votes against and six successful favor. The ruling New Democracy party’s Giorgos Vlachos was absent. ND holds 156 seats successful Parliament.

Those voting successful favour included the 5 MPs of the anti-establishment Course of Freedom enactment and autarkic MP Nikos Papadopoulos. 

All different absorption lawmakers had walked retired of the enclosure earlier the vote, pursuing leaders’ speeches, successful protestation astatine the procedural model governing the ballot.

The quality centered connected the bulk threshold required. Opposition parties argued that a little threshold of 120 votes should apply, arsenic projected by PASOK, while the authorities insisted that an implicit bulk was required. 

New Democracy’s rapporteur Makis Voridis, citing a conception of the Constitution, supported that an implicit bulk of the afloat House is needed successful cases relating to nationalist security, defence and overseas policy.

The procedural disagreement triggered crisp governmental exchanges. PASOK person Nikos Androulakis accused the authorities of “abusing democracy” and described the premier curate arsenic “weak and blackmailed,” announcing his party’s walkout. SYRIZA person Sokratis Famellos referred to the government’s stance arsenic a “parliamentary coup.”

The lawsuit relates to developments dating backmost to summertime 2022, when Androulakis, then a Member of the European Parliament, was informed by European Parliament IT staff that helium had received a malicious text connection containing a spyware link. The Predator spyware is susceptible of accessing a device’s messages, camera, and microphone.

Androulakis aboriginal besides learned helium had been placed under surveillance by Greece’s National Intelligence Service (EYP) connected grounds cited arsenic “national information reasons.”