Opposition leader sticks to his guns
The leader of the main opposition New Democracy, Antonis Samaras, insisted that his party had the right policies to extract Greece from a deepening debt crisis during talks on Friday with President Karolos Papoulias.
?New Democracy is fighting for a policy that would combat the recession and tackle rising unemployment,? Samaras told reporters after his meeting with Papoulias. ?This is the only way we will see a recovery,? he added.
Earlier, during his talks with Papoulias, Samaras stressed the importance of ?all European nations showing strong political will.? ?Otherwise we will be backpedalling or at a standstill,? he added.
Meanwhile an article by Samaras published in Germany?s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the opposition leader seeks to defy criticism about his refusal to reach a consensus with Prime Minister George Papandreou. In the article, entitled, ?The wrong recipe from the beginning,? Samaras insists that the Socialist government?s austerity policy has failed to curb fiscal problems and has instead plunged the country into a deepening recession. ?The Greek people are in despair because, despite their sacrifices, they see no improvement,? Samaras writes. The ND leader said a policy of ?imposing more and more taxes? had doomed the government?s reform drive from the outset.
