Calamos Supports Greece
GreekReporter.comGreek NewsEconomySamaras, Venizelos See Another Election Deadlock

Samaras, Venizelos See Another Election Deadlock

PASOK Socialist leader Evangelos Venizelos said he wants another coaltion - with him in it

ATHENS – Predicting the June 17 elections – as did those on May 6 – would result in yet another stalemate with no party able to gain enough votes to form a government, the leaders of the once-ruling New Democracy Conservatives, Antonis Samaras, and the PASOK Socialists, Evangelos Venizelos – who said they wouldn’t work with each other – have called for feuding parties to set aside their differences and agree to form a coalition no matter who wins. “It seems that we are heading for a deadlock,” Venizelos told a news conference, saying he had written to the other main parties calling for a broad-based national unity government.
“None of the scenarios after the elections looks like leading to a solution. What they’re leading to is an absence of government,” he said. PASOK, which won in 2009 with 44 percent of the vote before a disastrous administration under former head and Prime Minister George Papandreou, who imposed crushing austerity measures demanded by international lenders, fell to 13.2 percent in May under Venizelos. As Finance Minister, he had doubled income and property taxes and taxed the poor while letting the rich and tax evaders escape the crisis caused by austerity with near-impunity.
With his party falling even further in the most recent polls, which could leave it out of the next government and trying to regroup, Venizelos said he wanted to be part of a coalition with Samaras and with the second-place finisher in May, the vehemently anti-austerity Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA) headed by 37-year-old Alexis Tsipras. The Leftist leder surged with a platform vowing to renegotiate the terms of two bailouts totaling $325 billion from the Troika of the European Union-International Monetary Fund-European Central Bank (EU-IMF-ECB) to keep Greece from going bankrupt.
With voters defecting in droves to SYRIZA, both Samaras and Venizelos have frantically been trying to back away from the bailout deals they signed and said they, too, wanted to renegotiate some terms, although they attacked Tsipiras for the same stance, saying it could force Greece out of the Eurozone of the 17 countries using the euro, back to the ancient drachma, and into what they said would be the final collapse of the country. Venizelos said both New Democracy and Syriza would have to be included in a unity government to head off the danger of street protests against any new administration struggling with the worst economic crisis in Greece’s postwar history.
Anti-austerity parties got 68 percent of the vote in May and Venizelos said he recognized most Greeks are against the measures although he earlier said he didn’t believe that. Now, in his letter outlining his unity government idea, he said: “Greece cannot be governed with more than half of Greeks against the government.” He offered no ideas how the diametrically-opposed parties could come to terms and SYRIZA immediately dismissed the notion, saying it was typical of the “lack of clarity” offered by PASOK during the crisis it helped create.
Samaras told Mega TV that, “A third round of elections would be suicidal. We must have a government by any means,” although he offered no ideas how that could happen with the polls showing bitter divisiveness among the seven parties elected to Parliament to last month and set to do so again. After the stalemate, coalition talks collapsed in little more than week.
While official polls are not allowed now, internal polls cited in two Athens newspapers showed New Democracy has held on to a narrow advantage over SYRIZA but that neither could gain enough votes to govern. The newspaper Typos, which favors New Democracy, showed the Conservatives have the edge but that both are gaining voters while the other parties are losing. Proto Thema said four of the six polls gave a lead to New Democracy.
In one unpublished poll seen by the Athens News, SYRIZA had the lead with enough votes to form a two-way coalition with the Democratic Left, whose leader, Fotis Kouvelis,said that, “We will do whatever we can in order for the country not to remain ungoverned.” Greece is in the hands of a temporary caretaker government with virtually no powers. PASOK is out of the running, leaving Venizelos with only being able to hope someone needs him.
(Sources: Kathimerini, Reuters, Athens News, AMNA)

See all the latest news from Greece and the world at Greekreporter.com. Contact our newsroom to report an update or send your story, photos and videos. Follow GR on Google News and subscribe here to our daily email!



Related Posts