Greece's "Game of Thrones": Venizelos Squeezes Out Stournaras

ATHENS – Absent from the list of the 105 athletes that Greece will be sending to the London Olympics this month – excluding the 12 players from the national basketball team who somehow lost a qualifier to Nigeria – is Prime Minister Antonis Samaras. How he wasn’t named to the All-Around Gymnastics team is a mystery because this guy can do reverses, U-turns, flip-flops, spins and backflips better than any of those under-aged pre-pubescent Chinese girls that Olympic officials allow to cheat.
He could be on the diving team too, as he’s an expert at being in the tank for business, and the best in the world at a reverse 2 ½ pike with a twist, even if it usually ends in a belly flop. He’s so talented at turning things around – including himself – that if he were working at IHOP, he’d be the best waffle-maker in the place, and proof that nothing is worse than a vacillating politician except for an inept relief pitcher.
Two years ago, when then PASOK Anti-Socialist leader George Papandreou, who can do a mean 360-degree pivot himself, was Prime Minister, Samaras opposed the austerity measures the government imposed on the orders of international lenders to keep Greece’s welfare aid coming. Then, when he had a chance to join a shaky coalition with PASOK after Papandreou was hounded out of office after constant protests, strikes and riots, Samaras, leader of the New Democracy Capitalists, supported the pay cuts, tax hikes and slashed pensions he said were killing Greece’s economy.
Pushed ahead of the June 17 elections by Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA) leader Alexis Tsipras, who opposed austerity and said he wanted to tear up the bailout deals that Samaras and new PASOK leader Evangelos Venizelos signed with the Troika of the European Union-International Monetary Fund-European Central Bank (EU-IMF-ECB), Samaras said he had changed his mind again and opposed what he supported before he opposed it.
But uneasy lies the head that wears the crown, or gold medal, so once he got into office, Samaras promptly reneged on his pledge to try to renegotiate the terms of a second bailout loan for $173 billion. He had opposed the same conditions that came with the first rescue package for $152 billion when it was convenient for him to do so. But then so did Venizelos, who signed it too.
But this guy’s a shape-shifter right out of science fiction and more malleable than Gumby or any Play-Dough figure you can think of, so once Tsipras accused him of “surrendering” to the Troika without firing a shot, and after Venizelos pretty much said the same, Samaras met with Venizelos and Democratic Left leader Fotis Kouvelis, who are uneasy partners with him in a coalition Samaras was forced to form because his party didn’t get enough of the votes to set up a government.
In that meeting, Venizelos, a former Finance Minister, steamrollered Samaras like a Sumo wrestler, and the country’s alleged leader changed his mind again and said he’d instruct his Finance Minister, the noted economist Yiannis Stournaras – who at a meeting with officials of the Eurozone of the 17 countries who use the euro said Greece would not seek any changes to the memorandum it signed – to seek changes to the memorandum it signed.
But Samaras didn’t stop there. Venizelos, who doesn’t like being out of the limelight, demanded and got Samaras to allow him and Kouvelis to form a tri-partite negotiating team with Stournaras at critical EU meetings. That will give Greece three voices, which means Greece will have no voices because no one’s going to listen to a chorus complaining amongst themselves. Nothing like too many cooks in the kitchen, of course. Venizelos’ pretext was that Samaras – surprise – had reneged on promises to seek more time for Greece to enact the reforms that Samaras – and Venizelos had agreed to, and signed a contract to prove it.
Stouraras, who said Greece needed to enact more reforms before asking for concessions, is a capable person who founded an influential Athens think tank, the Foundation for Economic and Industrial Research (IOBE,) but was effectively politically emasculated and undermined at the same time by Samaras and no one was happier than Venizelos, who didn’t want Stournaras appointed in the first place. Samaras first picked former Bank of Greece President Vassilis Rapanos to be Finance Minister but he took ill, maybe after looking at Greece’s balance sheet, and complained that Samaras was top-leading his Cabinet with tried, re-tread politicians and people who shouldn’t be in government. That includes a legal advisor who was a legal counsel to Siemens, the German company accused of bribing every person in Greece except the neo-Nazis of Golden Dawn who were too busy beating immigrants and aren’t smart enough to be involved in financial matters.
So now Venizelos has gotten what he wants – a marginalized Finance Minister who would have outshone him – not too hard to do when you consider that Venizelos doubled income and property taxes, taxed the poor, and let rich tax evaders walk around with money pouring out of their pockets while he took food off the table of children. Venizelos missed his calling and was born in the wrong century. He should have been partners with Machiavelli or at least a leading cast member in Game of Thrones, the one plotting to kill everyone around him.
Too bad Stournaras didn’t catch an episode, the one where Venizelos – the backroom plotter – makes a fool of the Man Who Would be King – Samaras, who now has no real Finance Minister and Venizelos holding a sword over his head at the same time. Of course, there’s still hope that before the Triumvirate Meets the Troika, Samaras will change his mind again.