Following a meeting with Greek Prime Minister and New Democracy Conservative leader Antonis Samaras, his coalition partner, PASOK chief Evangelos Venizelos, said regardless of the outcome of critical elections this month for Greek municipalities and the European Parliament that the government can’t stand without his party.
“The government relies on cooperation,” said Venizelos. “Without (PASOK) there is no government.”
While New Democracy is locked in a tight battle with the major opposition Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA) for the top spot, PASOK has faded almost into oblivion after backing continued pay cuts, tax hikes, slashed pensions and worker firings that the Socialists instituted when ruling alone in a previous administration.
In return for supporting austerity and the firing of workers last year at the now-defunct public broadcaster ERT, Venizelos was named Deputy Premier/Foreign Minister. His party had hovered at 3-5 percent support in polls before aligning itself with a new center-left movement of intellectuals and academics called Elia, or Olive Tree.
New Democracy has only 125 seats in the 300-member Parliament and needs PASOK’s 25 votes to have a majority, although the government is trying to dismantle the Greece ‘s neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party that has 18 seats.
Speaking obtusely, Venizelos said: “What matters now is the overall picture. It must not be possible, on the night of the second round of the local government elections and the European elections, for someone to claim that the country has entered into a state of crisis and doubt.”
He stressed that government stability and completing the national strategy can only be done through what he called the “progressive wing” in reference to the ruling parties.
Asked whether this might be interpreted as an advance warning of PASOK’s departure from the government if the Olive Tree, which is floundering in the polls too, doesn’t take root, he said that, the “government belongs to the cooperation. Without us there is no government”.
This meant that government stability as a whole was at stake, he added. Venizelos noted this was not some kind of political “blackmail” but self-evident and a statement of fact “in a democratically sensitive and honest way”.
He said unless PASOK and Olive Tree are backed by voters that the coalition could be undermined and plunge Greece into chaos.
In response to a question, he suggested that drawing less than 10 percent of votes would have serious consequences for PASOK and the government’s legitimacy.
Alternate Labor Minister Leonidas Grigorakos, a PASOK member, warned supporters at an Olive Tree event that Greece could suffer “the same consequences as Ukraine or North African countries” if the election result puts the government’s future in jeopardy.
With Elia under 7 percent in opinion polls, Venizelos denied that he was trying to panic voters.
“I am describing reality in a way that is honest and sensitive toward democracy,” he said. “Is it possible that the description of reality in terms of democratic honesty can be perceived as blackmail? Have we lost our minds?”
Venizelos, apparently sensing he’s in big trouble, said that even if the Elia-PASOK alliance fares poorly in the European Parliament elections that it should be balanced against the vote for Greek municipalities
Polls show PASOK will do relatively better in the local elections with surveys giving the edge to New Democracy over SYRIZA, but also SYRIZA over New Democracy in the European vote.
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