Syriza: government lacks legitimacy

In a speech strongly critical of the present government, Coalition of the Radical Left (Syriza) Parliamentary group leader Alexis Tsipras on Saturday accused it of taking decisions without having any democratic legitimacy.   "Unfortunately, those governing us are prepared, once again, in the name of saving the country, to take decision that will mortgage the country's future without going to the trouble to asking the people's opinion and without having any legitimacy," he said during an event organised by Syriza in Thessaloniki on agricultural policy.   "From where do they get this right? In the name of not letting the country go bankrupt? But what is bankruptcy to them? Is it when banks don't have money or is it the destruction of social insurance funds, with pensioners unable to have a pension?", he asked.   Tsipras also disputed whether the government was in fact negotiating with its creditors, claiming that the representatives of the previous and present government were prepared to do anything asked of them, often before it was even asked.   Concerning the agricultural sector, Syriza's leader said that this was on the verge of collapse due to policies that preceded the Memorandum and the debt crisis, noting that farmer incomes had fallen by 23 percentage points in the last six years at a time when exactly the opposite had occurred in EU countries as a whole. (AMNA)