Samaras says troika pulled plug on his government

Former conservative prime minister Antonis Samaras believes that the country’s lenders pulled the plug on his government in late 2014 so as to prevent Greece from exiting the bailout agreements before Alexis Tsipras and SYRIZA came to power.

Speaking on the second day of the “50 Years of the Metapolitefsi” conference, Samaras, who was prime minister from 2012 to 2015, said that the lenders insisted that his government bridge a 900-million-euro fiscal gap in full knowledge that SYRIZA would win the next election.

He was responding to a question from Kathimerini Executive Editor Alexis Papachelas, who asked the former premier, “Do you have the feeling that at some point when SYRIZA was [going to win the next election] and our lenders maybe legitimately thought that this would happen, that they pulled the plug on you?”

“I’m convinced that it was certain that we were going to come out of the memorandum completely in February 2015, instead of June 2016. We’re talking about €900 million. And they insisted on this €900 million,” Samaras said.

He added that the lenders were aware that his minor coalition partner Fotis Kouvelis would not vote for a president nominated by Samaras and that elections would follow that Tsipras was bound to win.

“And they did not want to release me from the memorandum in advance,” Samaras said, adding that they knew that they would not be able to exert pressure on Tsipras if the country was not under the same fiscal constraints.

Samaras added that “it was fortunate that there was a 180-degree turn” during 2015 under the SYRIZA-Independent Greeks (ANEL) government.

The former prime minister also revealed that in his first meeting with German chancellor Angela Merkel, she presented him with a PowerPoint presentation showing how difficult the situation was for Greece.

“‘I have to suggest that you leave the eurozone,” Merkel told me,” Samaras said. “I stopped her and said: ‘We are not having this conversation. We will stay [in the eurozone] and do what we have to do.’”

Samaras lauded his cooperation with PASOK leader Evangelos Venizelos, saying that the two of them rarely left the prime minister’s office before midnight at the height of the crisis.

He also said that the Prespa name agreement, negotiated by Alexis Tsipras with North Macedonia, “betrayed generations and generations of fighters.”

Samaras also responded to a reference by former foreign minister Dora Bakoyannis that if there is a real opportunity for Greece and Turkey to find a solution to their issue, there should be a consensus.

“When I hear the word consensus with all three parties, it smells like compromise in the air,” Samaras said.