Papademos Pushes for Broader Parliamentary Support

ATHENS – Interim Prime Minister Lucas Papademos, in a bid to keep together a fractious coalition and get other splinter parties to support a second bailout from international lenders and more austerity measures, said he will meet with Members of Parliament not represented in the temporary government that will rule until new elections in February. Papademos’ Administration is represented by the former ruling PASOK Socialists, their  Conservative New Democracy opponents led by Antonis Samaras and the far Right-Wing LAOS party, headed by George Karatzaferis.  The government does not include other groups in Parliament, who were shut out when the new administration was formed to take over after Socialist leader George Papandreou stepped down earlier this month.
In a bid to bring the disparate Parliament together, Papademos said he will meet with Communist party head Aleka Papariga, who has voiced vehement opposition to the new government, and he said he also wants to talk with SYRIZA Leftist leader Alex Tsipras, and the Presidents of the Democratic Left, Fotis Kouvelis and the Democratic Alliance, Dora Bakoyiannis. That came after Karatzaferis, who has waffled on whether he supports the bailout and austerity measures – at one point saying he backed Samaras’ refusal to sign a contract to keep coming the loans of a $152 billion bailout and a second planned rescue package of $175 billion from the Troika of the European Union-International Monetary Fund-European Central Bank – said he now backs the government, but conditionally.
“Our participation in the government of Mr. Papademos confirms our support of the multiyear adjustment program,” Karatzaferis said in an open letter in the party’s newspaper, Alfa Ena, addressed to Greeks and the Troika. “Saving our homeland is paramount. And due to the dramatic course of events, that is not possible to come from domestic forces,” he said in a letter that followed a positive response from the Troika to a similar letter Samaras wrote them in an attempt to prove he supports the government, but without signing the bailout deal. He said he still does not agreement with some of the policies demanded by the Troika in return for the money. European Commission spokesman Olivier Bailly confirmed that Commission President Jose Manual Barroso has received the letter from Samaras that will be discussed in a Nov. 30 meeting of Eurozone ministers from the 17 countries that, like Greece, use the euro as their currency. Greece’s problems and the fear of default threaten to topple the Eurozone as well, making its crisis critical for Europe, as well as American and world markets.
The meeting also may decide whether to release to Greece a delayed $11 billion loan installment that had been held up because of Samaras’ and Karatzaferis’ refusal to support the second bailout and more pay cuts, tax hikes, slashed pensions and scores of thousands of layoffs of public workers. Without that money, Greece won’t be able to pay its workers and pensioners, presenting the prospect of a bleak Christmas that could also ruin more businesses, even as more than 100,000 have closed and unemployment has passed 18.4 percent as Greece sinks toward economic oblivion. That comes as Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos missed another deadline he set to release the names of tax evaders costing the country more than $60 billion in lost revenues. To make up for it, he has imposed waves of tax hikes on workers and the poor.
Karatzaferis cited the safeguarding of pensions and wages for millions of Greeks as motivation to support the program based on an Oct. 26 bailout agreement, while adding that “some adjustments to program policies are necessary.” He added: “Our proposals, however, will move directly to the objectives for successful fiscal consolidation, privatization with absolute transparency, economic stabilization, liberalization, with prudence and realism.” Karatzaferis said he would support the objectives of the plan in the next parliament and that if conditions stabilize, elections should be held on Feb. 19.