GREENS MP Giorgos Perdikis said yesterday that accepting €1,200 a month in lieu of a security detail did not undermine his party’s views on the abolishment of bodyguards for politicians.
Perdikis was outspoken last week when it emerged that some politicians were using their security detail for personal errands. There has also been controversy in the past over the number of officers assigned to low-level politicians on the island.
However, Politis revealed two days ago that between 2005 and 2009, as the leader of the Greens, Perdikis received approximately 1,200 monthly in order to employ a driver under the scheme which provided police officers to guard political leaders.
The monthly driver’s allowance was given as compensation for Perdikis’ refusal to be given any police officers as personal guards. When Perdikis was replaced by Ioanna Panayiotou as leader of the Greens, the allowance was transferred to her.
Perdikis said that the allowance went straight to his party’s finances, and hinted that other MPs pocketed the money directly from allowances such a “private secretaries” who were never employed.
“This allowance is given to the Green Party because we refuse to have a police officer guarding us like other politicians demand, which costs much more money to the state” said Perdikis at a current affairs radio programme yesterday morning.
According to Politis, in 2009 Perdikis was one of the leading MPs of the House Committee on Public Expenditure Control who pushed for curtailing the number of police officers guarding politicians and yet continued to receive money for a decision he vocally contested.
“By receiving the allowance this does not undermine the Greens’ consistent view that personal guards should be abolished” said Perdikis yesterday.
The newspaper revealed that a cabinet decision dating back to 2005, had agreed to give Perdikis – or the incumbent leader of the Greens at any point – the allowance due to his objection of having guards, and set the amount of the allowance according to “the wage of a driver in the public sector”
The newspaper questioned how the allowance was calculated in 2005, since there is no such position in the public sector.
“When the state decides to finally abolish appointments of police officers as personal guards to politicians, which doesn’t seem the case at the moment, then it can abolish the allowance also” said Perdikis.
A cabinet decision last week will see police officers numbers guarding politicians decrease by 26 to 94 by Monday November 21.
Meanwhile, the newspaper also revealed that former EDEK leader, Vassos Lyssarides, who up until now had 11 personal guards, also received a driver’s allowance in order to employ a twelfth officer who had retired from the force.
Under the new cabinet decision, Lyssarides will now have only four police officers guarding him.
