Just when it seemed that Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras had quelled social unrest and said he was putting the country on the road to recover, his snap decision to shut down the national broadcaster ERT without warning has plunged his government into a crisis that could force early elections, more analysts believe.
Samaras, the New Democracy Conservative leader will meet on June 17 – the one-year anniversary of winning elections – with his coalition partners, the PASOK Socialists and tiny Democratic Left (DIMAR) which opposed the closure of ERT although they had agreed with him to cut 2,000 public jobs as demanded by international lenders.
The new agency Bloomberg, in a piece entitled Greeks Were Wrong: Things Could Get Even Worse, said the decision has precipitation the biggest problem yet for Samaras, who had managed to steer Greece clear of being pushed out of the Eurozone for now.
But he has other problems compounding his dilemma. On June 10, Athens suffered a major blow to its effort to raise money by selling off state assets when it failed to secure a binding bid for natural gas monopoly DEPA, which means the government has to find revenues elsewhere or consider more austerity measures, which Samaras had flatly ruled out.
Samaras fired all the 2,656 ERT workers after saying the operation was ridden with political hires, not mentioning that it was his party and PASOK which had placed them there. He said a slimmed-down network called NERIT with less than half the staff would take its place by the end of end of August.
He also offered a compromise, rejected by his partners, to let ERT resume operations almost immediately with a skekleton staff to broadcast information programs. DIMAR head Fotis Kouvelis and PASOK chief Evangelos Venizelos said they want the station to resume full operations with no firings although they didn’t offer any other way to reach the target of 4,000 layoffs this year and another 14,000 by the end of 2014.
Samaras’ call has been blistered by opposition parties and unions in Greece, as well as journalist federations and broadcasters abroad. The European Broadcasting Union has also urged Samaras to change his decision. Finally, the article closes by saying that “in Greece, the summer of 2013 is starting to feel a lot like the summer of 2012.”
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