New political scandal in Greece after the accusations of the MP of Independent Greeks, Pavlos Haikalis, for the attempt of buying of votes for the election of president. After the announcement of the Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras that he is preparing a lawsuit for defamation of Haikalis on the allegations that Samaras personally is behind the bribery attempt, today Apostolopoulos came up with his own accusations in which he claims that the entire conversation in the video was set up to expose the political unethicality of Haikalis.
According to Apostolopoulos, who today was being interrogated by the Greek prosecution, he personally tried to lead Haikalis to admit that he wants and would accept a bribe in order to show the head of the party, Panos Kamenos, that he has a MP with zero political ethics in his ranks. According to Apostolopoulos, in their conversations, Hailakis repeatedly stressed that he needed money and led the conversation in a direction that he would accept a bribe. Because of that, he claims that the entire conversation on the video, which reached even the Greek prosecution, and for which Haikalis claimed that shows a conversation in which he is offered a bribe of 2-3 million euros to vote for the candidate of the New Democracy and PASOK, was essentially an attempt to show the true colors of the MP of Independent Greeks.
After the interrogation of Apostolopoulos, Greek prosecution invited Haikalis Kamenos and to a new interrogation tomorrow.
It is impossible to know if indeed there was an attempt for bribery, if it would have been accepted, whether it was directed to show the loyalty of the MPs of Independent Greeks or if it all was just a big show to win more votes before the elections.
The reliability of the footage is examined by the Greek police, and the first rumors of a police source in the media are that the footage is maybe fixed.
The climate of political chaos was further worsened by claims of two independent MPs that it is possible other MPs to have been paid off as well, because some of them were against the austerity measures, but in the first round voted for Stavros Dimas.
Political analysts see this whole mess as an almost sure sign that they are headed for early elections and that each party leads its own pre-election battle.
