Tsipras Says New Democracy, PASOK Created Greek Tragedy

ATHENS – Locked in a battle with the New Democracy Conservatives as front-runners in the June 17 elections that could decide whether Greece leaves the Eurozone, Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA) leader Alexis Tspiras has accused his rivals – and their former partner in a brief coalition government, the PASOK Socialists, of bringing Greece to ruin with decades of patronage. Greece is locked in a deep economic crisis that has been blamed on New Democracy and PASOK hiring hundreds of thousands of unneeded workers for generations in return for votes, creating a top-heavy government that is now sinking under the weight of $460 billion in debt.
A first ballot on May 6 gave New Democracy first-place, but without enough votes to form a government, while SYRIZA was a surprise second-place and blocked any attempts to form a coalition. New Democracy leader Antonis Samaras and PASOK leader Evangelos Venizelos supported austerity measures demanded by international lenders in return for two bailouts of $325 billion to prop up the country’s dead economy, conditions vehemently opposed by Tsipras.
He said he wants to renegotiate the terms with the Troika of the European Union-International Monetary Fund-European Central Bank (EU-IMF-ECB) or renege on the payments. Samaras and Venizelos – who also want to renegotiate some of the conditions they signed – said Tsipras’ stance is too radical and would force Greece out of the Eurozone, back to the drachma, and into complete economic collapse.
But Tsipras turned the screws on his opponents and said that he can more effectively negotiate with the country’s Eurozone partners because he said he believes Samaras and Venizelos are in their pockets and have lost all credibility with Greeks. Speaking after his return to Athens after trips to Paris and Berlin, Tsipras blasted Samaras and Venizelos.
“They are the moral and actual instigators of Greece’s tragedy,” he said. “Greece needs a leadership that can go abroad and not just say what foreign leaders are prepared to here but say what the Greek people wants to be said. It has to draw red lines, to plan a strategy and to stand up for the rights of Greeks. Only a government of the left can do this.” SYRIZA spokesman Vassilis Moulopoulos said the Leftists were encouraged by the reception they received in France and Germany but said that they disagreed with the view expressed by many of their counterparts that Greece should implement the terms of the loan agreement first and then seek to make changes through negotiations with the Eurozone members.
Moulopoulos also criticized the press coverage in Greece of Tsipras’s trip. He accused the media of falsely suggesting the French President Francois Hollande was irked by Tsipras’s warning that he should live up to his pre-election commitments and not become “Holland-reou”, a reference to former Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou who went across his Socialist principles to impose pay cuts, tax hikes and slashed pensions on Greeks. Moulopoulos said SYRIZA was determined to smash the web of interests that have led to Greek media losing their independence. “The network of entangled interest is as follows: Money for the production of information, information for the production of politics and politics for the production of money,” he said.
(Sources: Kathimerini)