PRESS RELEASE ON THE RECENT PRE-ELECTION SPEECH OF THE MAYOR OF ANTIPAROS
Last Saturday, the Mayor delivered a report on the state of the island under the present administration, and on what he considers has been achieved to date. He dedicated a significant portion of his speech to slandering us, the worst false accusation being that our group, Menoume Antiparo, has allegedly lodged an official legal complaint concerning the sewage treatment project. Since at one repugnant point in his speech he made an innuendo that the complaint was lodged by ‘some people who live on Antiparos and were elected’—thus hinting that our group is behind this—we call upon the Mayor to explain his allegation officially in public— within the next two days—stating the names of those who lodged the complaint with the Regional Authority concerning the sewage treatment project. If he fails to retract his statement in public, we will be obliged to seek legal recourse to counter his slanderous comments. Until this occurs, we would like to remind all citizens and residents about what is written in the Council Meeting Record of Proceedings dated 07/03/2012 (which the Mayor is so fond of referring to every time he looks for the ‘bad guys’ in the ranks of the Opposition):
(From the Council Meeting Record of Proceedings of 07 March 2012:) ‘The Hon. Mayor took the floor, and responding to Municipal Councillor Mr Skourtis, said that he does not view [the members of Menoume Antiparo] as being unjustified in having qualms as to whether or not the drainage project will be carried out, or whether or not it will be carried out correctly. [The members of Menoume Antiparo] are doing this out of concern…’
Finally, we would like to remind one and all that at many Meetings we demonstrated our trust in the present Municipal Authority, having been called upon to vote on the project in numerous instances and having voted in favour of it on every occasion (the most recent instance being the Municipal Authority’s protest regarding the new litigation case launched by the proprietors of the ‘Oreo Spiti’ property). The one and only time we voted ‘no’ was a ‘no’ of protest and a ‘no’ to non-transparency, a ‘no’ to sloppy and makeshift planning, and a ‘no’ to the lack of information updates on such an important matter. In any democratic society, the reasons behind the action we took would be clear; not, however, in the environment produced by the populist politics of the present Mayor.
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