On Wednesday, 21 October, during ANT1's Kalimera Ellada, Lazaridis said Giannakopoulou had anxiously asked him whether more revelations would come from the inquiry committee. She called the claim a lie and demanded he retract it.
Lazaridis posted that the exchange had gone beyond well-meant limits and that he respects and honours Giannakopoulou, apologising to her directly.
The PASOK press office called Lazaridis a repeat offender and said responsibility for the mud lies personally with Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis.
On Wednesday morning, 21 October, during the ANT1 programme "Kalimera Ellada", ND MP Makarios Lazaridis and PASOK MP Nadia Giannakopoulou traded sharp accusations on air. The row started when Lazaridis predicted that, after the elections, PASOK would be looking for a new party president and that Giannakopoulou would be the first to challenge Nikos Androulakis. The discussion then moved to the OPEKEPE affair. Lazaridis said Giannakopoulou had approached him in the Parliament cafeteria the day after he made a revelation at the inquiry committee, asking anxiously whether more would come.
Lazaridis also asked whether a person held in pre-trial detention in Crete was a kumbaros, a close friend tied by a family bond, of Androulakis. Giannakopoulou countered that he was trying to pin his own party's scandal on Androulakis. She denied any such contact and demanded that Lazaridis retract. He refused, saying he had made a political assessment and that anyone who provokes a rival would get answers. Giannakopoulou broke down in tears in the studio, and host Vasilis Chiotis tried to intervene, describing the set as an awkward scene.
Giannakopoulou later issued a written statement that rejected the claim outright. She said Lazaridis came to the studio to provoke rather than to debate, and that he had lied in front of thousands of viewers before turning to her family. Quoting her statement directly:
“He did not come to ANT1 today to discuss. He came to provoke.”
She also argued that the attacks were meant to suggest an intra-party challenge to Androulakis, only days after a large PASOK rally in Aigaleo. She stressed that PASOK has an elected leader and said she does not fear confrontation, but that there are human limits. Lazaridis then posted a public apology on X, saying his exchange with her had gone beyond well-meant limits while he was defending the government's record. In his post he wrote:
“Is one of those moments when, in our effort to defend the important government record, we may say one word too many.”
Giannakopoulou answered that his credibility was as sound as his degrees, and that responsibility also lay with the party he belongs to, which in her view tolerates such statements. She added that she would not be silenced by him or anyone else.
The PASOK press office issued its own statement, describing Lazaridis as a repeat offender who had again shown toxic political speech and insulting attacks. It said the ND party was accepting this style and placed responsibility for the mud on Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis personally. Lazaridis rejected the accusation that he had used vulgar language or bullied his opponent, and he told Giannakopoulou that she would have to come to court to prove her claims. Both MPs said the dispute would now be settled in court, and no date for any proceedings was given in the reports.
The exchange, the apology and the party response followed each other within a few hours on the same day.
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ND MP Makarios Lazaridis apologised on X on Wednesday, 21 October, after a live ANT1 exchange in which PASOK MP Nadia Giannakopoulou broke down in tears over his OPEKEPE accusations.
AI text based on reports by iefimerida.gr, ΣΚΑΪ, NewsIT and other publishers. Published .