The Albany Gazette - Greek govt faces censure motion over train tragedy

After a three-day debate, the no-confidence motion will be put to an evening vote that the government majority is expected to win.

The motion lodged by the socialist PASOK party on Tuesday came after a newspaper report claimed that a key sound recording from the night of the accident, extensively played by media at the time, had been misleadingly edited.

Opposition parties have accused the government of being behind the alleged subterfuge, as part of efforts to reinforce its chosen narrative that human error was to blame for the collision that claimed 57 lives in February 2023.

"Public opinion has reached an irrevocable conclusion -- that you are geared towards a cover-up" of the train tragedy, Nikos Pappas, parliament speaker for the main opposition Syriza party, told the chamber Wednesday.

"You are summoned to give answers," he said.

Opposition parties say the government handed out the spliced recording to friendly media.

- 'Hide the truth' -

"In every scandal, in every deed that goes unpunished, your political choice is to hide the truth," PASOK leader Nikos Androulakis told the government while submitting the censure motion.

The disaster struck when a freight train and a passenger train with 350 staff and passengers, mostly students, collided near a tunnel outside the central city of Larissa shortly before midnight.

A year after the accident, relatives of the victims say that despite government promises of a full investigation, state authorities wasted time and overlooked vital evidence.

Experts appointed by relatives' families say the accident site was cleaned of wreckage and topsoil before investigators could fully examine it.

The body of a young woman travelling on the passenger train still remains unaccounted for.

Experts for the families have also claimed that the freight train was carrying undeclared chemicals that caused a huge explosion after the crash, killing people who might otherwise have survived.

A Metron Analysis opinion poll last week found that almost nine in 10 Greeks thought little progress has been made in the investigation.

On Sunday, the To Vima weekly reported that leaked recordings of train staff on the night of the accident, had been edited to suggest human error was exclusively to blame.

In particular, one clip that saw extensive use at the time had the station master giving the go-ahead to an unnamed train driver.

To Vima on Sunday reported that the discussion was with a driver on an earlier train not involved in the accident, but his name was purposely removed to create the impression that it was with the driver on one of the trains that collided.

Who carried out the alleged manipulation is unclear, but To Vima suggested that unauthorised persons had improperly acquired access to material that should have been limited to investigators.

- Pressure on PM -

Critics point to an address to the nation by Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis just hours after the accident, in which he said that "everything" showed human error was to blame.

The government has reacted with fury, calling opposition parties "grave robbers" aiming to "destabilise" the country.

Government spokesman Pavlos Marinakis called the To Vima report "baseless" and a "stain" on the newspaper's history.

Main opposition party Syriza has called on Mitsotakis, who was comfortably re-elected in June, to resign.

The government, which has 158 lawmakers in the 300-seat parliament, welcomed the no-confidence vote.

Opposition parties were already furious this past week after a four-month parliamentary investigation into the accident concluded without assigning blame to senior politicians.

Over 30 railway employees and officials face charges over the February 28, 2023 disaster, with a trial expected to start in June.

Greece's 2,552-kilometre (1,586-mile) rail network has for decades been plagued by mismanagement, poor maintenance and obsolete equipment.

The government last year shrugged off another censure motion over a wiretap scandal implicating state intelligence and the prime minister's office.

(W.Walker--TAG)