Kouvelis, Loverdos Talk Team-Up

With his party on the verge of extinction, Democratic Left (DIMAR) leader Fotis Kouvelis is looking to hook up with a former PASOK Socialist minister, Andreas Loverdos, whose own new party Pact for a New Greece, doesn’t even register in polls, trying to save both of them.
Kouvelis was a member of the coalition government led by Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, the New Democracy Conservative leader and PASOK, but quit in protest over the firing of all 2,653 workers at the former national broadcaster ERT that was shut down.
PASOK leader Evangelos Venizelos backed Samaras and was rewarded with the positions of Deputy Premier/Foreign Minister although his once-dominant party, which won the 2009 elections with 44 percent of the vote, is hovering in the 3-5 percent range, the same as DIMAR.
Kouvelis and Loverdos are reportedly talking about teaming up their parties for the municipal elections which are expected to come around the same time as elections for the European Parliament. Major opposition Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA) leader Alexis Tsipras said he believes the ruling parties will be repudiated and he will come to power.
He opposes the terms and austerity measures of two bailouts of $325 billion from the Troika of the European Union-International Monetary Fund-European Central Bank (EU-IMF-ECB) that is saving the economy from collapse but hasn’t offered any alternative and said he would restore pay cuts, slashed pensions, lower taxes and rehire workers even though Greece is broke.
With Greece’s fractured left in disarray apart from SYRIZA, which has taken the lead in recent polls, Kouvelis and Loverdos are mulling whether to link their fortunes together.
It was reported their talks were cordial but did not result in a firm agreement between them, unnamed sources told Kathimerini, which said further negotiations would be held.
Kouvelis is said to have set the condition that DIMAR’s name be used on a joint ticket for the two parties but Loverdos reportedly objected it to, wanting his party’s name used as well.
Loverdos has a back-up plan apparently and was said to be talking to Venizelos, with whom he has had sharp disagreements, about the possibility of joining him in a hook-up with the so-called Initiative Of The 58, a center-left grouping of intellectuals and politicians trying to unify the left.