As PASOK Reels, Samaras Says No Elections

Greek Prime Minister got his narrow wins in new property taxes and mortgage foreclosures from Parliament, but it has driven up worry in the ruling coalition parties of his New Democracy Conservatives and their partner, the PASOK Socialists, that there could be a public backlash against them and drive calls for new elections.
Samaras dismissed the idea and said that his ejection of party veteran Vyron Polydoras for defying orders to vote for the measures insisted upon by international lenders would not create the need for snap polls.
The government is now down to only a three-vote majority in the 300-member Parliament, 26 less than when it took office with a coalition last year that brought in the Democratic Left (DIMAR) which left in a dispute over the firing of workers at the now-closed national broadcaster ERT, which was all over the Greek news.
But while Samaras is secure, PASOK leader Evangelos Venizelos, who gave in to austerity and was made Deputy Premier/Foreign Minister in return, is seeing challenges to his leadership from disgruntled party members fretting that under his control and acquiescence to austerity the once-dominant Socialists are at five percent in polls.
“The elections will happen in 2016,” said the premier’s aides, dismissing speculation that the government would not last much longer without getting a vote of confidence from voters. Samaras is said to be confident he can make Greeks believe a deep recession will end sometime in 2014, the seventh year of a recession that has seen record unemployment and poverty.
Venizelos, giving in to pressure, has changed his mind proposed holding a joint conference at the end of June with The 58 Initiative of intellectuals, academics and others who want to unify Greece’s fractured left before the European Parliament elections in May.
The PASOK leader said he was committed to changing “old-style party practices” but, as his practice, spoke only in broad, vague platitudes and did not give more details.