Samaras’ Coalition Seeks to Undo the Deals He Made

ATHENS – With Greece’s new coalition facing a technical vote of confidence this week from the Parliament it controls, the three quasi-partners: the ruling party of New Democracy’s Antonis Samaras, who won the elections, the PASOK Socialists who finished third, and the tiny Democratic Left which finished sixth, worked out a long and detailed, but vague, five-point platform aimed at getting Greece out of its economic crisis and buying more time from international lenders to delay more of the austerity measures that have wracked the country for two years.
The new platform essentially would reverse many of the positions Samaras and PASOK leader Evangelos Venizelos took when they signed a bailout deal of $173 billion when the two political leaders were sharing a brief, shaky hybrid government before the June 17 elections, but they face stiff opposition from the Troika of the European Union-International Monetary Fund-European Central Bank (EU-IMF-ECB) which warned that any attempt to tinker with reforms or fail to make another $15 billion in cuts could lead to the money pipeline being shut off and that the new government must adhere to the austerity measures that Samaras and Venizelos supported. Greece is surviving on a first rescue package of $152 billion from the Troika.
The coalition said it would try to:

1. Amend the bailout to try to avert more more pay cuts, tax hikes, slashed pensions and the firing of 150,000 state workers
2. Enact unspecified changes to the political system, but which could include the end of immunity for Members of Parliament and the end to the pension privileges they enjoy, benefits that had enraged Greeks suffering under austerity
3. Try to restore growth and raise revenues, and going after tax evaders owing the country some $70 billion, a vow that has been made repeatedly by many previous governments but never implemented
4. Make unspecified changes to the country’s program dealing with illegal immigration. Samaras said he wants them out of the country
5. Start unspecified social welfare issues

The coalition government said it would also seek a two-year delay in reducing Greece’s debt, still hovering about 10 percent, to the 3 percent ceiling mandated by the Eurozone, the 17 countries that use the euro as a currency, although it was reported this had been agreed upon before the critical June 17 elections which New Democracy barely won over the anti-austerity Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA) which had vowed to re-do the bailout deal and go so far as to renege on the arrangement, which Samaras said could have forced Greece out of the Eurozone. Although he supports the austerity measures that he previously opposed, Samaras switched again during the campaign to say he opposed some of the measures he supported before he opposed them. The coalition said it wants to delay more pay cuts and pension reductions, although the deal Samaras signed supports them.
In more reversals of position by Samaras and PASOK leader Evangelos Venizelos, who also supported austerity, the agreement:
–        Seeks the restoration of collective bargaining rights they had agreed to abolish
–        Scrapping the firing of 150,000 public workers which was also part of the deal
–        Reducing the Value Added Tax (VAT) for restaurants and food catering from 23 to 13 percent
–        Raising the limit at which taxes could be assessed. When he was Finance Minister, Venizelos doubled income and property taxes and taxed the poor
–        Restoring cuts in the minimum wage that Samaras and Venizelos already made
–        Paying unemployment benefits for two years instead of one
The new positions – which mimic many of SYRIZA’s positions  – could pit Samaras against the Troika. Other issues the new government said it would eventually take up include further recapitalization of the bank system that a previous shaky New Democracy-PASOK government put on the brink of ruin by forcing private investors to take 74 percent losses. The coalition partners said they plan to create a stable tax system for the next 10 years with lower indirect tax rates and will ask for pension fund portfolios, which suffered losses when their Greek bonds were tendered in the country’s debt swap, to be recapitalized, the document showed. Samaras’s campaign pledge to cut tax rates for businesses to 15 percent from 2013 hasn’t been included in the list of issues to be negotiated, the document shows.
The partners support state-asset sales, a key plank of plans to reduce Greece’s debt, and will negotiate with creditors that some of them, like the national rail company OSE, be carried out through public-private partnerships, according to the document. The Greek state is seeking to raise $62.8 billion euros from state assets, half of which are real estate, by 2020 to meet conditions of its bailout agreement. The process was halted after the country’s first election on May 6 produced no government and only about $3.7 billion has been realized so far.