After ten days of pressure by opposition parties, newly appointed Deputy Rural Development & Food Minister Makarios Lazaridis submitted his resignation on Saturday.
An hour earlier, the Prime Minister’s sister and New Democracy MP, Dora Bakoyianni, had urged Lazaridis during a Live interview on a TV channel “to resign in order to make it easy for the Prime Minister and the party to continue their work.”
The former deputy minister quickly launched a counter-attack.
Appointed to this ministerial post in the week before Easter to replace another minister whose name was involved in the OPEKEPE case file of the European Public Prosecutor’s office, quickly came under fire when it was revealed that he had no the required university degree when he was hired as “scientific counselor” at the Education Ministry a few years ago.
He gave a few interviews in which he lied on his education credentials and made things worse when he spent hours on social media blaming and even threatening with legal measures Greek users.
In public statement following his resignation, Lazaridis said he was resigning to allow the ministry and government to continue their work without interruption, and he referred to a controversy over his origin of wealth statement of 2019, state-run news agency amna reported..
“Throughout my entire private life I acted with honesty and provided for my family with a dignity that I will not allow anyone to besmirch,” he said among others and thanked the prime minister for his appointment to the ministry.
Later on Saturday though, he returned to social media to ReTweet a post criticizing a “phobic government that forces to resign those targeted by the Leftist gang”. The post RT by lazaridis was tagged to him and urged Dora Bakoyianni to “go eat some chocolate and spend time with her grandchildren.”
Boom! Within minutes, the ex deputy minister was again under fire with main opposition party PASOK highlight the “sexist and age racist comment.” PASOK spokesman told media, it was not up to the socialist party to tell the Prime Minister whom to expel form the ruling party.
Worth noting that Makarios Lazaridis has been a close aide and friend of Kyriakos Mitsotakis even before the ex minister was elected a member of the Parliament.
