Worries pile up for Karamanlis

Two more problems landed in Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis’s lap yesterday, as two of his most senior ministers tried to settle a public disagreement and he was forced to suspend a close aide followin his conviction in court. The prime minister’s office said that veteran Cretan politician Yiannis Kefaloyiannis was being suspended from his honorary role as «informal adviser» after being convicted late on Monday night by a Rethymnon court of harboring a criminal and forcing another to commit a crime. Kefaloyiannis asked policemen not to testify against a farmer they caught cultivating 550 cannabis trees in the area of Mylopotamos. The former interior and public order minister and current conservative MP was given a suspended one-year prison term. He said the case against him was a conspiracy and appealed against the sentence. Karamanlis’s office said that Kefaloyiannis was being suspended pending his appeal. Coming on the back of recent scandals, this was another blow to Karamanlis as he prepares to address his party’s central committee. The prime minister also has a tiff between government spokesman and State Minister Theodoros Roussopoulos and Defense Minister Evangelos Meimarakis to deal with. The latter had suggested publicly on Monday that the government was not managing crises properly and that a team should be set up to handle public relations. In fact, Roussopoulos formed such a team a year ago and representatives of each ministry, including that of Defense, are represented at its daily meetings. The two men briefly spoke in private yesterday after a Cabinet meeting. Sources said that Meimarakis told Roussopoulos he had not tried to suggest that the government spokesman was not doing his job properly or should be removed from his post. Publicly, Meimarakis said that he had just made some «well-intentioned comments of self-criticism.»