Greece’s government will meet ambitious savings targets this year despite a deepening recession, the prime minister said Saturday, to secure the continued flow of international rescue loans that are protecting debt-crippled Greece from a catastrophic bankruptcy.
As George Papandreou delivered his annual, keynote speech on the economy in Greece’s second-largest city of Thessaloniki, police on the streets outside clashed with violent demonstrators as more than 25,000 people — from taxi-drivers to sports fans — joined a wave of anti-austerity protests.
Two people were arrested and nearly 100 people detained, police said, while at least two demonstrators were injured during the clashes in the northern port city.
“We will push through all the major changes our country has needed for years,” Papandreou said in a nationally televised address. “And we will take whatever other decisions are needed, we will do whatever is necessary to keep the country on its feet.”
Papandreou added that his main concern was to keep the country solvent.
“We don’t have the right to abandon this effort halfway through,” he said. “Because if it remains half-done, (our) sacrifices will have been in vain.”
“We have taken the decision to fight to avoid a catastrophe for our country and its citizens: bankruptcy. We will remain in the euro. And this meant and means difficult decisions.” Papandreou said.
Meanwhile, Chancellor Angela Merkel has urged Germans to have patience with Greece, drawing a parallel between the financial reforms that Greeks need to implement and Germany’s reunification process two decades ago.
Merkel told the Tagesspiegel am Sonntag newspapers that Athens must keep up with reforms if Greece is to continue to receive support, but conceded change would not happen ‘overnight.’
She compared the process in Greece to that of unifying the former East and West German nations in the 1990s, recalling how long it took ‘to build up new bureaucratic structures, to dissemination information and to privatize.’
Merkel said: ‘We must be patient.’
(source: AP)
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