PASOK Rebels Want Party to Quit Coalition

Seeing the party’s popularity plummet from 44 percent in 2009, when it won the Prime Minister’s office, to barely 10 percent now, dissenters within PASOK want the Socialist party to break away from the uneasy coalition government led by its otherwise bitter rival, the New Democracy Conservatives. The tiny Democratic Left makes up the third partner.
But, seeing the party’s base continuing to evaporate because of its support for austerity measures that are antithetical to its principles, the Left Initiative Group said PASOK should no longer back the “memorandum policies” of support for pay cuts, tax hikes and slashed pensions demanded by international lenders in return for rescue bailouts.
The group’s leader, Yiorgos Panayiotakopoulos, said austerity is leading to mass impoverishment in Greece and said his faction is rebelling against another planned $17.45 billion in spending cuts and tax hikes aimed primarily at workers, pensioners and the poor that are supported by the party leader, Evangelos Venizelos.
In a meeting of PASOK officials from across the country, Panayiotakopoulos that continuing to ask for bailouts from what he called the “lender blackmailers” of the Troika of the European Union-International Monetary Fund-European Central Bank (EU-IMF-ECB) would make Greece dependent on bankers and lead to the sell-off of state property that would be lost forever.
He said the Left Initiative is reconsidering whether to stay in the party even as several other key members and former ministers have defected to form their own parties or withdrawn their support for Venizelos, who is struggling to keep the party together in the face of growing discontent over his leadership and continued backing of austerity.
Venizelos, a former finance minister who doubled income and property taxes and taxed the poor, briefly put up a struggle against Samaras’ plans to impose harsh measures on the poor and pensioners and to lay off public workers, but has reportedly relented.
Last month Venizelos tried to rally support and set out what he said was a new direction for the party before he gave in to Samaras’ demands. The PASOK leader said he wanted the party to remain a stabilizing factor, keep working with the Democratic Left that has given its total support to Samaras, oppose the major opposition party of the Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA) and “confront fascism,” of the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party that has 18 seats in the Parliament and has surged past PASOK into third place among the country’s parties.
Venizelos had wanted to hold a party conference this year to give PASOK a new direction but those plans have been shelved until early next year because the coalition was trying to agree on the new spending cuts and tax hikes. Venizelos called on PASOK members to put aside personal grievances, or “strategies,” and back the party’s position on the latest cuts. “The situation has changed, the scope has changed, the roles have changed,” he said.
At that time, there has been no indication  that any of PASOK’s 33 MPs would vote against the measures, although Democratic Left. MP Odysseas Voudouris said that he would not support the new cuts, arguing they went against the leftist party’s pre-election pledges. All three parties in the coalition have reneged on promises to resist more austerity.
(Sources: AMNA, Kathimerini)