The order by Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, the New Democracy Conservative party leader who convinced his coalition partner, PASOK Socialist chief Evangelos Venizelos to drop his objections to a Nov. 7 dawn riot police raid to oust former workers at the closed national broadcaster ERT from their headquarters has set off anger from the country’s opposition parties.
Samaras, who earlier in the year issued civil mobilization orders to force striking Metro and dock workers to return to their jobs under the threat of arrest or being fired, had let the ERT workers stay in place for five months and keep broadcasting via a pirate signal even though a replacement station called EDT, which had been running from a basement and putting out old documentaries and black-and-white 60-year-old movies until recently.
The early morning invasion at ERT by the police apparently caught the workers there unaware and led to immediate denunciation by opposition parties and critics.
SYRIZA MP Zoe Konstantopoulou was among a group of leftist deputies who attempted to enter the premises in the northern Athens suburb of Aghia Paraskevi a few hours after police stormed into the building. “The government… has carried out a coup against itself and against legality,” Konstantopoulou told journalists after police stopped them from entering the site.
The police used a pair of handcuffs to lock the main entrance to the site. Images of the handcuffs went viral on Greek social media, before police replaced them with a lock but the symbolism had already been sent.
Fellow SYRIZA MP Dimitris Stratoulis described the night-time operation as an “illegal, coup-like act.” The decision also drew criticism from the right-wing populist Independent Greeks party as well as the Greek Communist Party (KKE). Independent Greeks leader Pannos Kammenos tweeted that “occupation forces have swept the ERT building.”
“After the ERT shutdown and the mass layoffs, we have once more seen the face of state violence and terror,” said Communist Party deputy Diamanto Manolakou.
The police evicted dozens of protesters who had been occupying the building since June when the government shut abruptly the state broadcaster down and fired all its workers without notice. Many have been rehired to run the new station, splitting the opposition.
Scuffles broke out between some of the protesters and riot police, who had cordoned off the area and blocked the entrance to the building. Police fired small rounds of teargas to disperse some of the protesters and briefly detained two former workers and two unionists for resisting authorities, the officials said.
Crowds of supporters started rallying outside the main ERT building. A public rally was called for later in the day. But the ruling parties have defended the action. “The restoration of legality, the free and full operation of public radio and television is necessary … to protect the public interest,” the socialists said in a statement, with Venizelos taking a U-turn from his previous opposition now that he is serving as Deputy Prime Minister/Foreign Minister. “No one should be allowed to stop the modernization of public radio and television in the name of populism and opportunism,” PASOK said.
The Democratic Left, which left the coalition after disagreements in the government handling of the ERT case, attacked the administration it once served. “The past few months have highlighted the impasse of the government’s policies. This was to be expected given the absence of any meaningful negotiations, MP Dimitris Hatzisokratis told Mega TV
But former journalist Pantelis Kapsis who is now the Deputy Minister of Public Radio and Television, said the occupiers left the government no choice but to remove them.
He told To Vima that yet another new national broadcaster to be called NERIT would take over the old ERT headquarters within two weeks. He said the police found only 10-15 people in the building and that the facilities seemed undamaged.
Kapsis said his agency would perform an inventory check, before the interim broadcasting service, the poorly-received EDT which the public has largely avoided watching, gradually takes over. The facilities will then be handed over to NERIT’s board of directors. Compensation had not been paid out to the ERT employees because the relevant services did not have payroll lists, he said.
When asked if 600 employees are sufficient for the operation of EDT since ERT, a well-known patronage dump, had more than 2600, Kapsis said the new broadcaster will keep recruiting new staff to run two TV stations and an undetermined number of radio stations.
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