Loverdos on Golden Dawn comment

Andreas Loverdos, a former minster of both health and labor who now leads a movement called RIKSSY, hit out at critics yesterday after his comments about far-right Golden Dawn being the “Greek Hezbollah” and the “first genuine movement” to emerge since the fall of the junta in 1974 drew negative remarks.

“Enough of the demagoguery and fascism of the supposed leftists,” said Loverdos, who also said that Golden Dawn was responsible for “activism in areas where there are great problems.” Soaring unemployment is without doubt the biggest challenge facing Greece today. No society can maintain its cohesion and balance when the jobless rate stands at nearly 30 percent of the general population and far higher than that among young people. However, the only way to generate jobs and get people back to work is through investment and the stabilization of the economy. The state, society and the media must change their hostile stance toward investment and stop seeing it as something suspicious and profit as a bad thing. The creation of new employment opportunities can only come from the private sector as the state simply does not have the money to put any more people on its payroll or to make large investments. This is the tactic the state followed in the past, and it did so in a wasteful and disorganized manner that ultimately led to the bankruptcy of the country.