Finance Minister Gikas Hardouvelis is Greek’s parliament’s most wanted man according to  fellow lawmakers who accuse him of showing ‘contempt to parliament’ for never bothering to show up.

Greek media reports say the issue has, for months now, become a point of discussion among lawmakers (even by ruling conservatives) in the corridors of parliament.

In the month of October alone, the finance minister was conspicuous by his absence to answer a series of questions posed by opposition parties over the government’s privatisation agency, on offshore companies, the public debt and on the progress of negotiations with the country’s lenders.

Hardouvelis is not a politician although he has held crucial government positions in the past as he was the chief economic advisor to two prime ministers: To Costas Simitis when Greece entered the eurozone, and to Lucas Papademos when Greece almost exited it. Hardouvelis was not elected to parliament but was, instead, appointed by PM Samaras as finance minister. He is the second finance minister in a row, following Yannis Stournaras, to be appointed by Samaras rather than be elected.

Former Parliament speaker Apostolos Kaklamanis (who as a Pasok deputy supports the coalition government) has berated Hardouvelis for ‘having no respect for parliament’ and that he  cannot ‘consider himself a representative of the people given his total absence from it’.
 
“You have never stepped foot in parliament – and I must tell you are a guest in this chamber and you are almost as arrogant as (Prime Minister) Samaras,” he said last week addressing the minister.
 
Last week, Syriza’s Nadia Valavani was caustic over his failure to show up for ‘a second time this month’ to explain how the government intends to pay the €600 million it owes in rents, since May, for buildings that it sold to private investors and then leased back.

“For the second time  this month he has been ‘impeded’ from coming here,” she said.

Nikos Tsoukalis, whose centre-left party Dimar was formerly a part of the coalition government,  had a similar bone to pick after the minister’s disappearance act when it came to answering questions about the government’s progress in the inquiry into offshore companies.

Tsoukalas had initially put his question in writing on July 17 but Hardouvelis, neither his deputy minister, have responded.

“Yet again, the minister has not come answer the question” he said.

Hardouvelis, a US-trained economist, replaced Yannis Stournaras as finance minister following a cabinet reshuffle in June. He holds a chair in banking and economics at the University of Piraeus and was the head of Eurobank’s economic team.  

In an analysis featured by TPPI a few days ago ('Greece’s Finance Minister: The revolving doors’ syndrome on steroids'), Yanis Varoufakis, a Professor of Economic Theory at the University of Athens, and a Visiting Professor at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, University of Texas, lambasted the Finance Minister for his close ties to Eurobank.