With more austerity measures coming and aimed at workers, pensioners and the poor, more Greeks are getting fed up with the government’s failure to corral tax cheats. More than two-thirds of Greeks say their government is failing to fight tax evasion, a poll showed, one of their chief complaints, along with pay cuts, tax hikes and slashed pensions.
Almost 68 percent of respondents in a Kapa Research/To Vima poll said the ruling coalition of conservative Prime Minister Antonis Samaras was not doing enough to catch tax dodgers. Finance Minister Yiannis Stournaras said the government should impose mandatory jail time on tax cheats as the law now only allows suspended sentences.
The poll was taken on December 20-21, a week before prosecutors said that the names of relatives of former finance minister, George Papaconstantinou, had been removed from a list of 2,062 possible tax cheats with Swiss bank accounts. Papaconstantinou, who negotiated Greece’s first bailout with the Troika of the European Union-International Monetary Fund-European Central Bank (EU-IMF-ECB) in 2010, has denied doctoring the list.
He is facing a parliamentary investigation, a first step under Greek law to possibly stripping him of his immunity as a former cabinet member, although earlier in December a parliamentary committee voted not to investigate him or his successor as finance minister – current PASOK Socialist leader Evangelos Venizelos – for their failure to check the list for possible tax evaders.
In the poll, the main opposition SYRIZA party led Samaras’s New Democracy by 22.6 percent to 21.5 percent. PASOK, the three-party coalition’s second-biggest member which ejected Papaconstantinou from its ranks, was at 6.2 percent – about half its showing in the June elections. It won 44 percent in 2009 when former leader George Papandrou was elected Premier.
In what was bad news for Samaras, who has been crowing he has saved Greece by getting the Troika to release a coming series of $69 billion in rescue loans as part of a second bailout of $173 billion, Greeks said they were unimpressed as as almost 71 percent said they were no more optimistic after the Eurozone’s agreement to release the funds.
However, 59 percent said the government should be given more time – more than twice as many as the 28 percent who wanted immediate elections – and about 46 percent said Samaras was a more suitable prime minister than SYRIZA leader Alexis Tsipras, who said he wants to scrap the bailout deals if he comes to power.
About 77 percent of respondents said Greece should remain in the Eurozone and just 16 percent backed a return to the country’s national currency, the drachma.
(Source: Reuters)
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