Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis reshuffled his cabinet on Friday, appointing new finance and transport ministers and handing other key portfolios to younger officials.
The reshuffle comes in response to recent mass protests over the nations’s worst rail tragedy.
Mitsotakis is trying to win back the public’s trust after the train crash in 2023 that killed 57 people.
The second anniversary, last month, of the Tempi railway disaster led to large protests over suspicions that the government is trying to cover up the case.
Popular ministers get the nod in the reshuffle
Mitsotakis’ New Democracy party faces declining approval ratings amid the political fallout from the disaster.
A poll for Star TV found that more than 50% of Greeks want early elections, and more than 65% of ruling party voters believe government officials should be put on trial for the accident.
The prime minister appointed Kyriakos Pierrakakis, the popular former minister of digital governance, as the new finance minister. He replaces Kostis Hatzidakis, who is now deputy prime minister overseeing economic growth policies.
Christos Dimas is the new transport minister, tasked with overhauling Greece’s railways.
Mitsotakis also picked Stavros Papastavrou and Nikos Tsafos for the environment and energy portfolios, as Greece hopes to make its economy greener while also looking for gas reserves on its territory.
What was the Tempi railway disaster?
The rail disaster occurred on February 28, 2023, when a passenger train from Athens to Thessaloniki collided with a freight train.
Fifty-seven people died in the crash, including many students, and many more were injured.
The two trains had traveled toward each other for miles without triggering any alarms. The accident was blamed on faulty equipment and human error.
A recently issued independent report denounced the dilapidated condition of the rail network. It also highlighted serious shortcomings in the investigation of the accident.
Earlier this month, parliament voted to investigate whether a senior official dispatched to the scene by Mitsotakis authorized the bulldozing of the crash site, leading to the loss of vital evidence.
More than 40 people have been prosecuted, including a local station master responsible for routing the trains, who has been charged with “homicide due to negligence.”
