With Greeks fleeing to their villages and vacations for August, the coalition government headed by New Democracy Conservative leader and Prime Minister Antonis Samaras is gearing up for trouble when they return next month and expected protests against the firing of public workers and charges the major opposition party Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA) is stoking the fires of resistance.
New Democracy accused SYRIZA of trying to organize a mass movement against the firings and austerity measures with envoys from the country’s international lenders return to Athens to check the books for progress on reforms before more aid is disbursed.
The conservatives reacted after a SYRIZA member and former parliamentary candidate for the leftist party, Andreas Karayiannis, wrote on his Facebook page that, during August, people should collect “rocks, clubs, bricks, marble, iron, rope and lighters to use in September to fight back against state violence.”
Karayiannis has made headlines in the past for his outspoken comments but this time he prompted an immediate response from New Democracy. “SYRIZA is aiming to create general unrest and turmoil in the country in September in order to derail it from its course toward exiting the crisis,” said the conservative party, which called on leftist leader Alexis Tsipras to oust Karayiannis.
SYRIZA responded by accusing New Democracy of taking the party member’s words out of context and trying to divert people’s attention from their day-to-day problems.
Earlier, SYRIZA MP Panayiotis Lafazanis had pledged to restore to their positions all the employees being transferred from the Defense Ministry. Lafazanis accused the government of putting the country’s security at risk by moving experienced staff from their posts.
Tsipras said if he were the country’s leader he would not fire anyone although the government is essentially broke and that he would break or modify bailout deals with the Troika of the European Union-International Monetary Fund-European Central Bank (EU-IMF-ECB) who have insisted on pay cuts, tax hikes and slashed pensions in return for aid to keep the economy going.
He hasn’t explained where he would get the money to keep the government and social services operating as Greece is locked out of the private borrowing markets.
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