Christodoulopoulos

Controversial ex-minister Tasia Christodoulopoulou, who held the first-ever “migration policy” portfolio in a Greek government during radical leftist SYRIZA seven months in power, repeated on Thursday that refugees and migrants congregate in a handful of Athens squares “for only a few hours a day”.

One of the more controversial Cabinet members of the previous coalition Tsipras government generated yet another firestorm of criticism this week after expressing a view that Greece’s migrant-swamped islands have “cashed in” from the ongoing refugee/migration crisis.

European Commission Vice-president Frans Timmermans and Migration & Home Affairs Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos met with Greek leadership on Thursday to focus directly on the migration crisis that has drastically affected several Greek isles and even replaced the “Greece-euro issue” as the main worry in Europe.

Central Athens’ Victoria Square was again turned into a makeshift migrants’ camp overnight on Thursday, as dozens of third country nationals, including women and children, filled the open site. Most of the people described themselves as Syrian refugees, although there were several groups of young Afghan, Iraqi and even Pakistani men.

The “leftist memorandum” and the explosive migration crisis inundating Greece’s eastern Aegean islands will reportedly claim another two “victims” ahead of the snap election expected next month: Alternate Migration Minister Tasia Christodoulopoulou and her husband, Alternate Shipping Minister Thodoris Dritsas.

SYRIZA members are apparently ‘jumping ship’ left and right, with five top cadres announcing resignations weeks before yet another snap election. Party secretary and prominent member Tasos Koronakis tendered his resignation during the meeting of the party’s political secretariat on Monday.

The government of the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (fYRoM), north of the Greek province of Macedonia, on Friday declared a state of emergency on its southern and northern borders due to the heightened flow of mostly Middle Eastern nationals trying to enter and exit the land-locked country for further destinations in western Europe.

The radical leftist SYRIZA government went out of its way on Tuesday to offer political protection to its controversial alternate migration minister on Tuesday, amid a continuing “tsunami” of undocumented migrants landing on various Greek isles from practically “all points east”.

The relocation of 200 hundred immigrants and refugees (a drop in the ocean compared to the large flows coming into Greece) from Pedio tou Areos to the newly set up lodgings at the Elaionas facility, situated western of Attica was completed Sunday. According to sources nearly 250 illegal immigrants ‘fled’ just before the transport operation to Votanikos started.

Anger against Alternate Migration Policy Minister Tasia Christodoulopoulou continued to simmer on Wednesday on the eastern Aegean holiday island of Kos, given the continuing Third World-like situation with thousands of migrants camped in public spaces on the isle.