ND troops need rallying
Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis will chair the first meeting of the ministerial council in several months today in a bid to breathe new life into his government, which appears to have lost its way. High-ranking government sources told Kathimerini yesterday that the mood within the conservative camp is negative and it is not clear what steps can be taken to improve it. Even government spokesman Theodoros Roussopoulos, normally ready to take on the government’s critics, appeared reluctant yesterday to take a swipe at yet another voice of discontent from within his party. Former Public Order Minister Vyron Polydoras became the latest conservative deputy to admonish New Democracy’s leadership. «They should stop looking for alibis or sacrificial lambs in the so-called rebels. They are wasting their time,» he wrote in an article published in yesterday’s Eleftheros Typos. «If their aim is to secure the silence of the lambs or tacit approval, then this does not seem very democratic either.» Polydoras said the real problem lay with «ministers beyond suspicion, close friends and the arrivistes golden boys.» Roussopoulos was asked how the government will respond to Polydoras, given its tough stance when other MPs have failed to toe the party line. «I don’t interpret the public comments of members, and respected members in this case, of New Democracy as you do,» he told journalists. «I believe that everyone expresses their opinion with the same goal in mind: the improvement of all of us as a government.» The subdued response may have been triggered by a Metron Analysis opinion poll that indicated that the difference between ND and PASOK had narrowed to just 0.3 percent from more than 5 percent just over a year ago. One of the factors that seems to have hurt the government’s popularity is the controversy surrounding Merchant Marine Minister Giorgos Voulgarakis and his alleged business activities. Voulgarakis wrote to Kathimerini yesterday to deny that there was anything untoward about the activity of his real estate company. He insisted that there was nothing suspicious about his relationship with Piraeus Bank, which issued a statement saying that all the transactions with the minister’s firms had been above board.
