Government seeks unity for vital vote
Facing what promises to be one of the toughest weeks of socialist PASOK?s two-year stint in government — with a crucial vote on new austerity measures and a frenzy of union protest action looming — Prime Minister George Papandreou and several ministers appealed for consensus over the weekend to pass reforms and secure vital rescue funding from the country?s international creditors.
In a letter published in Sunday?s Kathimerini, Papandreou sought to summarize the achievements of PASOK but also its shortcomings over the year.
?We often failed to make the necessary changes as compromises with vested interests were put before the common good,? he wrote. ?We often yielded to statism and clientelism,? he added.
Papandreou, who is reportedly planning to invite opposition party leaders for talks with President Karolos Papoulias later this week, also appealed for cross-party concensus. ?It?s only by working together that the country?s political forces can reverse the notion that Greece is a lost cause,? he told Proto Thema newspaper.
The government must win Thursday?s vote in Parliament on new measures — chiefly wage and pension cuts and an overhaul of the civil service — to secure the release from foreign creditors of an 8-billion-euro tranche of rescue funding on which the country?s solvency depends. The aim is to resolve the matter before Sunday when eurozone finance ministers are to meet in Brussels and discuss Greece?s situation.
Although PASOK has a slim majority of four MPs, the reforms are expected to pass despite threats by some ruling party MPs, including Thomas Robopoulos, to vote them down. Robopoulos has threatened to quit the party on Monday.
In a joint letter, Health Minister Andreas Loverdos, Education Minister Anna Diamantopoulou and Transport Minister Yiannis Ragousis appealed to MPs to rally together. ?We have to hit the accelerator, not the brake, to get out of this crisis as fast as possible,? they said.
The letter was welcomed by Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos as ?a good omen for the critical week ahead during which a lot is at stake, if not everything.?
There was upheaval in the ranks of main opposition New Democracy over the weekend too, as the party dismissed from its political committee Thymios Liberopoulos, the outspoken head of the Attica?s taxi drivers? union. The decision came after the influential unionist reportedly threatened to ?crush? the director of the Social Security Foundation (IKA), Rovertos Spyropoulos, when the latter called on striking workers to pay their emergency taxes.
