The Minister of National Defence and Leader of the Independent Hellenes party, Mr. Panos Kammenos, was awarded the high distinction of “Golden Alexander” A’ Class Medal by the Dean of Alexander Technological Educational Institute of Thessaloniki Mr. Konstantinos Varsamidis.

In the award ceremony which was held in the Olympic Museum of Thessaloniki, the Minister of National Defence stated the following among other things:

“It is a special honour for me to be here today, in Thessaloniki, the capital of Macedonia, and to be awarded this supreme honour of the “Golden Alexander” Medal, particularly in a very sensitive moment for our Macedonia, for this big national case which seems to approach its solution.

It is clear that there is only one Macedonia. There is one and only Greek Macedonia and particularly over the last years it has become an objective of Slavic claims. The objective is not only the name, but the territorial integrity and, ever worse, the slavicization of the history and culture of Macedonia, that is of the Greek nation.

This has never happened before in the global history and, of course, we will not allow this effort to end up in a loss of our national sovereignty and distortion of history.

Any decision that includes the Greek term “Macedonia” or its derivative in the name of this Slavic entity will be a decision which opposes the decision of the Council of party Leaders under the chairmanship of President of the Republic Konstantinos Karamanlis in 1992. Whatever the solution is, its legalization requires the consensus of the Council of Leaders which meets under the President of the Republic and the unanimous decision of the Leaders of political parties.

I would like to make clear that, as Minister of National Defence and member of the government but also as Leader of the Independent Hellenes, we will never agree with the Greek term “Macedonia” being included in any solution may be proposed based on our vote.

Whatever the solution is, apart from the unanimous decision of the parties, it should be the result of a referendum in which the Greek people must decide. Because it is the name of the Greek Macedonia that concerns the Greek people and the usurpation of Greek people’s history and culture by a group of Slavs can only cause a decision to be made by the Greek people.

It is a supreme honour for me to be awarded the “Golden Alexander” Medal A’ Class  by the Alexander Technological Educational Institute. The Alexander Technological Educational Institute of Thessaloniki is one of the biggest and most modern educational institutes in our country.

Of course, we, the Greek people must be particularly proud because we live in the country that gave birth to democracy which created the appropriate conditions for the development of the more general notion of Education which you, the academic community, serve with respect. There is no doubt that Democracy and Education are interconnected notions. Democracy creates the conditions for the development of Education, while Education forms those values which consolidate Democracy.

We should not forget that Ancient Greece was the birthplace of science, arts and culture as a result of the elaborate thought of our ancestors and their developed education, and influenced the entire humanity in its later history and contributed essentially to the construction of a modern western civilization.

At this point, I would like to refer to the work you are doing which is not only related to the knowledge you provide to your students, but to the formation of their personalities and to the culture of all those elements which are considered necessary for the personal and social progress as well. Particularly today, when civilization has acquired a unilateral orientation and man has turned his interests in the matter and has become “one-dimensional”, education has primary importance and is considered as the motivating lever for every activity, as well as the last shelter for modern human.

We must not forget also that the educational community together with the Church have been the foundations of the creation of the Modern Greek state in early 18th century and contributed to the formation and the cohesion of our nation. This same role they play today too.

Educational institutes promote values and ideals that are related to freedom, rule of law, meritocracy, security, social solidarity, prosperity and development of society.

The burden of the responsibility for educators and the importance of the value of education were also stressed by Alexander the Great who characteristically stated about his tutor, Aristotle: “I am indebted to my father for living, but to my tutor for living well.”

I am well aware that you, here, through your work, you contribute to the principle of “living well”, by promoting responsible citizens capable of responding to the requirements of every sort of human activity with professional, scientific, cultural efficiency and responsibility. The quality education that you provide creates hopes for the development and improvement of our country’s productive activity.

In our Armed Forces, we are well aware of the results of your work. In this context, we will cooperate in order to see how we can combine this period of military service with the possibility of the provision of professional certification, so that a graduate of this Institute can use these few months of military service as a period of gaining professional experience.

We have realized in the Armed Forces that human-centred command augments its force and is based on the wider education provided to the personnel, which is not restricted only to military training, but it includes academic education as well, to which the contribution of teachers is very important.

In this context, cooperations have been developed between Military Educational Institutes and respective Higher Educational Institutes. In parallel, the Supreme Joint War College of Greece and the National Defence College cooperate with Universities both in Greece and abroad, and they participate in Masters, as well as in organizing seminars, one-day and two-day conferences and other similar activities.

The purpose of these activities is the creation of high level of academic specialization of personnel whoa re capable of promoting the upgrade and the continuous improvement of the quality of services provided, as well as of the total operation of defence and security.

Our country’s defence and security cannot be irrelevant to education and to the work that you offer.

Today, I feel particularly touched for being awarded such a distinction by your Institute which contributes actively to all the things I referred to, in the difficult circumstances in Greece nowadays, and makes every possible effort to respond to the needs of the labour market of our country and to the improvement of our economy.

As I told you in the beginning of my speech, we are in a very critical period. Our contribution, the contribution of the Independent Hellenes, a really small movement and not party, which began in 2012, a movement which is centrist and has been created by people who come from either the centre-right, like me, or from patriotic social democracy, like the deputy leader Mr. Sgouridis; or people who until 2012 had not been involved in politics and faced this dire situation in our country, the situation of the abolishment of national sovereignty and we decided to coexist by implementing what many had spoke about in the past, national reconciliation.

Greece and the Greeks paid for the civil war. We paid for it with blood and disaccord. The civil war ended many years ago. I realize that everybody has their own wounds but these wounds of the past cannot determine our future. Greeks must live united. Greeks will manage to win this battle only if they are united. This symbol which is today in the port of Thessaloniki, the armoured cruiser “Averof”, is a proof of this.     

The armoured cruiser “Averof” which was honoured by the residents of Northern Greece, Macedonia, Thessaloniki. It is not just a ship which served as flagship of the Hellenic Fleet; it was the symbol of liberation of the Greek people as well. It is not a ship that has been built by our Navy, it is a ship which was bought during a huge financial crisis, similar to today’s crisis and with the 10% that a great benefactor of our country, Georgios Averof, offered, and it managed to become the ship of the liberation of Eastern Aegean islands and of the Dodecanese.

This is also the message that we should be sending from now on, all of us for the future of this land. We have gone through a big financial crisis which has passed. Greece, as of 2018, will come into a new era. The years during which our national sovereignty had been abolished, have passed. As of August 2018, Greece will not be living under the dependence of the national sovereignty, and the Independent Hellenes contributed to this, in order for us to be able to be liberated.

We pay particular attention to the contribution of the youth in this land’s future. From now on, we must, in cooperation with the Technological Institutes, Universities, schools and colleges to move onto the renewal of the personnel that handles public affairs in our country, of the political personnel as well as of the administrative personnel of the country.

At this point, I would like to thank the Technological Institution of Thessaloniki in particular for the really big effort of connecting the students with society itself. You are an example and a guide in this effort in which we, the Ministry of National Defence and the government, are assistants too in order to see how we can better combine knowledge, obtaining technological and scientific essence with the possibility of offering professional careers to young people.  

The main success and the proof that we have left financial crisis behind will be to stop the huge disaster that our country has undergone with the emigration of young people abroad.

So, if we are talking about an end of the abolishment of our national sovereignty and crisis for which Greece has paid, we should count this too with the return of young people who left Greece and sought for a better future abroad because they saw that the situation here was hopeless.

The message I want to send concluding this speech is that hope came back.

Greece is on the forefront again and it’s you who are the protagonists, dear friends of the Higher Technological Institute of Thessaloniki.

I believe that next year when we will be celebrating the Feast of St Demetrius and our national anniversary, this Technological Institute, this city will have more young people who will have come back from abroad.

Thank you very much.”