Former prime minister Antonis Samaras, currently a New Democracy MP, has lashed out against the government and President Prokopis Pavlopoulos over the Athens-Skopje accord on the naming issue, declaring that it is a bad deal and an unnecessary and humiliating compromise.

In a statement, Samaras said that SYRIZA’s celebrations cannot mask the universal disappointment of the Greek people. He also said that Pavlopoulos’ decision to go along with the agreement betrays a lack of historical knowledge.

Samaras said that Pavlopoulos’ stance is unable to erase from the national memory the legacies of the late president Konstantinos Karamanlis and the late PM Andreas Papandreou, both of whom had opposed the use of the name Macedonia by Skopje.

Samaras said that the government in the settlement gave away the nationality, identity, and language of Macedonia, thus undermining the Greekness of Macedonia internationally, creating multiple loci of conflict in the future, and undermining the stability of the entire region.

“The SYRIZA-Independent Greeks government may have snatched the vote of the Greek people, yet they should know that the Greeks will not allow then to steal their soul as well,” the former PM said.

.

Headlines