PASOK chief Evangelos Venizelos, serving in the coalition of Prime Minister and New Democracy leader Antonis Samaras, said he never suggested the Socialists should quit the government in a speech to his lawmakers aimed at boosting morale before this month’s critical elections for Greek municipalities and the European Parliament.
PASOK, which was treading at 3-5 percent in polls, aligned itself with a new center-left political movement called Elia (Olive Tree) in a desperate attempt to keep from vanishing after winning the 2009 elections with 44 percent support, but the new alliance is showing at only about 7 percent, a dire indicator for the once-dominant Socialists.
PASOK’s parliamentary group convened on May 9 to talk about the possible outcome of the upcoming European elections on May 25, which will come a week after local elections in Greece.
“I never spoke about a withdrawal from the government,” Venizelos said. “This is not a Samaras government and we are not associates or friends,” he said, referring to Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras. “The government exists because we raised the issue of a cooperation of European democratic forces.”
While he warned that the government would collapse without PASOK and can’t exist without the Socialists vote in Parliament, he denied he was trying to panic voters.
“Describing reality as it is is never coercive,” he said. “I raised the basic question that everyone is raising,’ he added, although critics said he was a scaremonger trying to save his own skin.
He is serving as Samaras’ Deputy Premier/Foreign Minister, after backing the firing of public workers at the former national broadcaster ERT last year.
Venizelos’ continued support of austerity measures demanded by international lenders, which were begun in a previous PASOK government he served as finance ministers, have pushed his party to the edge of extinction but kept him in the limelight.
A veteran PASOK official, Kostas Skandalidis recently appeared on SKAI, where he offered half-hearted support to Venizelos, while hinting that “all bets are off” in PASOK after the European elections if PASOK fares poorly.
When asked if the party’s leadership will be challenged, Skandalidis responded that he does not reject anything and that Venizelos has “nothing to fear” from a party conference.
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