With the Greek government already probing possible ties between the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party and whether military forces are training its members, a prosecutor has ordered an investigation into a blog post on the special forces reservists’ website demanding the government and President resign and an interim government be appointed under the “guarantee” of the armed forces.
The call raised the eerie specter of the military junta overthrow of the government in 1967, which Golden Dawn worships and came as a psychiatrist at a state hospital was being investigated after he was said to be an official of the party and was giving mental patients statements they were certified to carry guns and that he wanted the government to fall.
Defence Minister Dimitris Avramopoulos said he wants to find out if any members of the military are aiding Golden Dawn in training its members to fight after another report the party had a 3,000-man army and wanted to destabilize the government of Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, the New Democracy Conservative leader and his coalition partner, the PASOK Socialists.
The misdemeanor court prosecutor ordered the investigation of the reservists blog posting, which appeared on the website of the Special Forces Reserve Union (KEED).
Apart from the government’s resignation, the posting calls for Greece to withdraw from its bailout obligations with international lenders who insisted on harsh austerity measures in return for $325 billion in two rescue packages, special courts be set up to prosecute those responsible for Greece’s financial crisis and all property held by German companies, individuals or the state seized to pay off German World War II debts, among other things.
Referring to list of claims of negligence against the government, the forces posting said the “institution guaranteeing all of the above could be the country’s armed forces,” in effect calling for a military coup to overthrow the government because the reservists claimed that the government has failed in its duty to provide “health, education, justice and security” as required by the Constitution. They also want President Karolos Papoulias, a Nazi fighter during WWII to step down.
The reservists said they would hold a demonstration later on Sept. 26 in Syntagma Square across from the Parliament, the usual gathering spots for hundreds of failed protests and strikes over the last three years.
The group says that a new “government of national unity” should take power, to be chaired by the President of the Supreme Court and to include “proven personalities with no political links,” and members of the Academy of Athens. Those terms would, however, also seem to exclude Golden Dawn as it has 18 Members of Parliament.
Sounding like the Third Reich that Golden Dawn admires, the reservists said they were protecting the “motherland” from its “enemies”, the group calls on “all Greeks regardless of their political beliefs to show up with a Greek flag at Syntagma Square to demand the restoration of our national sovereignty”.
The group said it wanted the immediate suspension of Greece’s deal with the Troika of the European Union-International Monetary Fund-European Central Bank (EU-IMF-ECB) and the bailouts that are all keeping Greece from totally collapsing, and for a ban on all politicians now in office from staying in offfice.
The reservists also want all illegal immigrants shipped out of the country, one of the main tenets of Golden Dawn and said that the armed forces along with “security forces” would take over Greece.
The reservists appeared in uniform last October to protest the visit of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose country fits most of the bill to save Greece but who has insisted on big pay cuts, tax hikes, slashed pensions and public worker firings in return.
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