New Democracy party leader Antonis Samaras emphasised on Thursday evening that “the country never had a greater need for elections than it has today.”
Speaking during a nationally televised address, Samaras noted that “we struggled to avert a worse recession and we avoided the worst,” while he again insisted on the need for development measures to jump-start growth in the country.
Touching on the outcome of negotiations between the Greek government and the EC-ECB-IMF “troika” to pave the way for a new loan agreement, Samaras said that “if there had been substantive negotiations over the past two years, we would not be with our backs against the wall today.”
He further stressed that despite all this, several points were achieved, namely:
Defence of the so-called 13th and 14th salaries in the private sector. “This issue had not ‘closed days ago’, as some claimed. Only yesterday (Wednesday) afternoon an agreement text was sent to us that still contained the abolition of the two (extra) salaries. We ultimately prevented this.
Avoidance of horizontal cuts of supplementary pensions. “I insisted that the lower supplementary and primary pensions be excluded from any new reduction. And that happened. The issue was never raised for us to ‘choose’ if we shall save the primary or supplementary pensions. The troika insisted that cuts also be made in both types. There was a night-long negotiation for this issue … After our standing insistence they accepted that the total cuts be half of those they desired, so that the monthly payment of low-level pensioners remain intact,” he said.
Samaras also said the Greek government and political leaders rejected a new increase in objective real estate tax criteria, while Athens did not accept a proposal that a reduced minimum wage be extended to the rest of the salary scales.
“In short, we fought to avert more recession, more unemployment, more padlocks (on businesses’ doors).”
Samaras pointed directly at the “damage”, as he said, done over the past two years, a reference to the previous PASOK government and resigned PM George Papandreou.
“…Because our debt has now become unmanageable. In 2009 it was high, but it was still manageable. Now, everyone wants the debt to reach, after eight years, the level it was in 2009, when this turmoil began. This alone shows the extent of the damage that took place over this fatal two-year period,” he said, adding: “With the present agreement, a path has opened for the Greek debt to achieve a considerable ‘haircut’. This will be a great gain. But it allows us to hope again. We remain steadfast on what Greece mainly needs today: growth measures.”
(source: ana-mpa)
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