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Coalition Promises Meritocracy, Transparency, Austerity Relief

New Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras says his coalition government will make a lot of changes in the way Greece runs

ATHENS -Flush with the flow of victory, Greece’s new Prime Minister Antonis Samaras’ New Democracy party and its two partners in a coalition government, the PASOK Socialists and tiny Democratic Left party, have vowed to change the culture of corruption, cronyism and cozy arrangements that have been the hallmark of Greek politics for generations. Samaras has the backing of PASOK leader Evangelos Venizelos and Democratic Left leader Fotis Kouvelis, but neither allowed any of their party members to join the new Cabinet.
The coalition comes under immediate and intense pressure to try to right the crushing economic crisis that has been worsened by harsh austerity measures insisted upon by the Troika of the European Union-International Monetary Fund-European Central Bank (EU-IMF-ECB) that gave Greece a first bailout of $152 billion in loans, and is ready to pony up a second for $173 billion. But the pay cuts, tax hikes and slashed pensions it demanded in return has created 22.6 percent unemployment, led to the closing of 1,000 businesses a week and shrunk the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 6.5 %, a debacle from which it could take years to recover.
The coalition calls itself a “government of national responsibility,” although it has only 48 percent of the popular vote and faces the likelihood of more of the protests, strikes and riots that brought down the former government of then PASOK leader and Prime Minister George Papandreou last year after he imposed austerity in 2010. Samaras campaigned in part on renegotiating some of the tough conditions that he supported and signed after he had earlier opposed them before changing his mind several times. He has simultaneously sworn to uphold the memorandum he signed with the Troika and to try to get better terms, although the lenders said any attempt to tinker with reforms or fail to make another $15 billion in cuts could lead to the money pipeline being shut off.
In a statement, the three parties said that their aim “is to face the crisis, open the way to development and revise the terms of the memorandum without compromising the European course of the country nor its remaining in the Euro, and, of course, without doubting the goals that are understood for eliminating fiscal deficit, and the control of debt and applying the structural changes the country needs.” Greece is staggering under a crushing debt of $460 billion caused in large part by New Democracy and PASOK hiring hundreds of thousands of needless workers for generations in return for votes, but the coalition said it would change that culture of patronage, setting it on a collision course with labor unions who said they would fight Troika demands to fire 150,000 public workers.
The statement added that the government aims “to create the conditions so that the country exits the crisis for good and also is independent of memorandums in the future.  The new government of national responsibility will be smaller with the prospect of its being reduced further still and having merely a functional staff. It will not consist of fiefdoms of political party influences; it will work in unison, it will be based on transparency and the program agreements of the political parties that support it, recruiting the entire administrative mechanism with meritocratic criteria.”
It added that the government “will be based on flexibility so that any disagreement that may arise does not suspend neither its work nor its consensus which is necessary for the continuation of its work. Finally, with the initiative of the new government and the Presidency of the Parliament, its operational charter will change so that the execution of legislative work can be applied and Parliamentary control as well in the new conditions of governments of co-operation. In that way, the role of the Parliament will be upgraded.”
Critics of Samaras, led by Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA) leader Alexis Tsipras, whose party finished a close second in the critical June 17 elections, said they do not believe that Samaras will carry through on his pledges or will fail to get the Troika to ease up on austerity and have estimated that if he does not, that the government will not last through the year and Greece could face new elections yet again.

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