The ruling conservatives have lashed out against popular comedian Lakis Lazopoulos for his anti-government routines on his weekly TV show, which they call a platform promoting the positions of Syriza.
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Lazopoulos, who is openly pro-Syriza, has regularly attacked the government over the harsh austerity measures it has imposed, for veering too far to the right and for bowing to the country’s international lenders and big business interests.
In his show last week, he also mocked the coalition government’s junior partner Pasok, its former leader George Papandreou and founder of the centre-left Democrat Socialists Movement, journalist Stavros Theodorakis – the leader of Potami (The River) – and the Communist party, KKE.
Lazopoulos enjoys huge popularity for his political and social satire on his show, Al Tsantiri News broadcast on the Alpha TV channel. His show last week was watched by more than 2,300,000 viewers.
But critics, mostly conservative, have accused him of using his show as a platform to propagandize the positions of Syriza under the guise of political satire.
Maria Spyraki, the New Democracy spokesperson, said on Wednesday that his routines were ‘vulgar', preying on people’s suffering.
“The ultra-rich merchant of human pain, the propagandist of Syriza’s positions and the close associate of (Alexis) Tispras has gone beyond the limits of vulgarity,” she said, accusing him of hypocrisy after recent news reports claimed he had transferred €3 million abroad in 2010-11, “at a time when the Greek people were living in fear of bankruptcy”.
“Why did he take his money out?,” she asked. “The question to him and Tsipras, is why he doesn’t bring it back home. Is there something he knows that the rest of the Greeks don’t know?” she asked.
Conservative Parliament Spokesman Adonis Georgiadis – a regular subject of ridicule on his show – also called on Lazopoulos to bring his money back to Greece.
“He is trying so hard to get Tsipras elected but he doesn’t bring his money back to Greece. Does he have no confidence in a Syriza government?” Georgiadis wondered in a youtube video he posted on Wednesday.
Georgiadis also appeared to hold a personal grudge against Lazopoulos, saying that ‘in the ten years that I have been in public life, there has not been a show in which he has not attacked me”.