The Greek government failed on Tuesday to persuade doubters in the ruling Socialist party to back a new bailout deal with the EU and IMF, after the fund said the country could not afford to slacken the pace of reforms.
Addressing the meeting, Finance Minister Yiorgos Papakonstantinou denied that the government’s economic policy had “failed” but admitted to delays and some mistakes. He noted that in order to receive the fifth tranche of the loans agreed with the IMF and European Union countries, Greece had to show “that it is doing something” and also referred to pressures to carry out privatizations.
Vasso Papandreou, who chairs parliament’s economic affairs committee, evoked French revolutionary Mirabeau in recounting what she had told Papaconstantinou at the meeting.
“When parliament is blackmailed, then democracy is blackmailed, according to Mirabeau,” she told reporters.
Another former minister, Costas Geitonas, said the prime minister and president had not tried hard enough to push for a consensus between the political parties on the measures to be adopted and said the government “appears to have lost the communications game”.
Tuesday’s committee meeting went on for so long that a meeting of the PASOK political council due later in the day was postponed until Wednesday, and a cabinet meeting supposed to sign off on the plan and send it to parliament was likewise put back by a day from Wednesday to Thursday.
(source: ana, Reuters)
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