Pilloried for his abbreviated two-year tenure that ended in November, 2011 when he resigned in the face of relentless protests, strikes and riots against austerity measures he imposed on the orders of international lenders, former prime minister and previous PASOK Socialist leader George Papandreou says in a 52-page text that the criticisms are unwarranted.
Published under the title We Debunk 15 Myths, the document rejects allegations that the Papandreou administration inflated deficit figures in 2009, while invoking the limited room for maneuver during negotiations for Greece’s first bailout and spelling out several initiatives to crack down on tax evasion, the newspaper Kathimerini reported.
Former New Democracy leader and Papandreou’s predecessor as Premier, Costas Karamanlis, was blamed for creating the country’s economic crisis and for what Papandreou claimed was lying about its true fiscal condition. Papandreou also blamed current Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, now the New Democracy chief, for failing to support him.
Papandreou has previously blamed European Union leaders for not standing by him, speculators he said were trying to profit from Greece’s misery, and taken no responsibility for his administration’s failure to get the economy going, go after tax cheats or lure foreign investors.
He is now lecturing at Columbia University in New York on the crisis, after previously doing so at Harvard, as well as hitting a lucrative lecture circuit to be paid handsomely for discussing what went wrong in Greece. He also remains President of Socialist International, although critics said he betrayed the principles of his party and sold out to foreign interests.
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