The Alternate Minister of National Defence Dimitris Vitsas during an interview at newsbeast.gr and to journalist Marinos Gasiamis stated the following:

– The Government has been blamed by a great part of the Media for the immigrant and refugee situation in Lesvos and elsewhere. What is your stance considering that the Army has undertaken the establishment of a great part of the refugee hospitality infrastructure?

What we have been doing for some time now, in cooperation with the Ministries of Migrant Policy and Civil Protection, is to cater for the hospitality infrastructure and the first reception of refugees and immigrants and simultaneously, apart from the sheltering and accommodating, we are in charge of their boarding and health care and a series of other operational procedures.

It has been, and one might say will continue to be, a difficult job affected by many factors. One, is Europe, which does not deliver its promises and certain criticism is held on safe grounds. Meaning that there is no problem to solve. That it is affected by the manner the refugee and migrant flows are dealt with so far by International Organisations. The fact that the activities of International Organisations most of the time covered other continents, much poorer and with unstable political regimes. It is affected by the financial status of our country, because the burden the Greek Government and Greece as a whole has been called to bear is under conditions of financial crisis and not of financial prosperity.

Of course it is also affected by the whole situation of refugees and immigrants. There were many efforts and we have had our share of success during this procedure, besides, other countries are congratulating us.  However, I keep saying that our problem is receiving help, not being congratulated on. Of course it is also affected by conditions we cannot control, such are the weather conditions.

– Perhaps the congratulations extended by these countries is a way of saying thank you, aiming to keep all these people in Greece?  

I do not want to believe this, but it is a constant effort of the Greek Government, the Greek state to promote ideas of solidarity on one hand, and to jointly manage the situation with Europe on the other hand.

In order to achieve this we need to distribute the burden, and we see that the Visegrad countries (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia) do not simply close their borders but they deny to assume their burden. At this point allow me to   mention the shortages of Community Law, meaning how you can impose your opinion on such issues.

You see that over the past years at financial crisis level, the European Capital, as well as the International Capital, countries as well, are imposing, for example, memoranda. Hear me when I say that in the years to come, this will be the top issue, for the world, Europe and the UN.

– Playing the part of devil’s advocate and focusing only on Greece, one might say that the burden falls upon the shoulders of the Armed Forces , implying that there are no other Civil Protection infrastructures.    

I face your question not as devil’s advocate but as an honorary title for the Armed Forces, meaning that they have managed to bear such a heavy  burden. At the same time this whole procedure of solidarity demonstrated on part of the Greek people cannot be disregarded. Thousands of people demonstrate excess solidarity.  

They also demonstrate previous shortages of the Greek state at Civil Protection level. I frequently stress the fact that on many occasions as a Government we are as good as our word, in Greece we need to take some steps. We have established for example the Ministry of Migrant Policy, which did not exist.

Another matter we should look into is the establishment of forces of dual objective. Greece does not have any alert codes apart from the Xenocrates plan. There is a series of issues we have been called to solve in the heat of the moment. This way you solve problems but cool-headed.

 How concerned is the MoD with the developments in Turkey?

The duty of the Armed Forces and the MoD is to be prepared. The fact that we are in a region of instability, being a fort of stability is burdening us with more duties. So, if I were to say we are concerned, it would mean that we are not doing our job. How are doing our job? By being alert.

We are performing all necessary exercises. We could say that 2016 could be named as Armed Forces Exercise and practice year, everybody accepts that. We are upgrading and maintaining our weapon systems and despite  the dire financial conditions we are catering for the quality of life of the Armed Forces staff.
In this sense 2017 will be the year of the Armed Forces reconstruction, and I am quite sure about this, since we are in the final stage of planning and implementation.

Already, the Minister and I have  provided the basic information of reconstruction which today can bear more results with less cost, provided you have set the right objective. The right objective is, as I said before, the safety of the country.  

– These days the German Press has stated that Greece is a country for which others make the decisions, not its Government. What is your answer to that, having recently completed and celebrated two years of governing?

We are celebrating and fighting at the same time. There three efforts undertaken by SYRIZA and one has already been achieved. What has been achieved is one might say a political subversion. It happened two years ago.  Despite everybody’s predictions for a “Left Parenthesis”, it is here to stay for the years to come.

The other two concern the financial subversion. We are waging a battle to complete this financial subversion in 2018. Meaning to make the great step as a country and leave behind all these memoranda and the supervision and have a social subversion which has to do with the manner this newly-produced wealth is redistributed.  

I mean the manner we are dealing with the humanitarian crisis, in the sense that certain things are changing such as the insurance system, but we need all these tools so that this subversion has one important element, the element of social participation.  

I understand that every opposition force will try to subvert the subversion, simultaneously though I have faith in our powers since we managed to subvert the subversion and in the mind and the experience of the Greek people and the generations to come this is a road leading us to hope, hope is good, however merely talking about it bears no results.

And answering your question concerning the German and the Greek Press. Many times such ‘wars’ go far beyond political data, to ideological ones. Meaning that journalists do not first report and then try to prove what they have reported but they set off with they want to prove.

However, such a policy concerning Greece, accompanied by a policy of utter social austerity in Europe has led us where?  It has led to the rising of far-right and populist tensions which try to subvert the idea of a United Europe and are an omen of worse situations in the future.

I am quite concerned about this, but as a political power we are doing what we can.

– If the evaluation is not completed will the government be willing to have this “hot potato” on its hands?

I am seeking an answer as well. First of all the evaluation will close. Once this happens though, we will be asked to swiftly take more measures which will amount to about  4 billion Euro and we will be blamed that we are not closing the evaluation swiftly enough, hence we cannot take any more measures. There is no cohesion, no logic in this. So we need to close the evaluation and I believe we will have positive results.

We have a government and a parliament taking the decisions.

– So, elections during 2019?

The elections will be held I believe after we have completed our objectives within constitutional contexts. Of course we will have elections in 2019. Besides any elections before the regular constitutional procedures should bear  equivalent consequences.