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Final discord between Papandreou and Samaras

19 October 2011 / 21:10:37  GRReporter
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Flat refusal is the response of the President of New Democracy Antonis Samaras to the call of Prime Minister George Papandreou to participate together in the European summit on Sunday in order to present a unified position.

According to sources, the leader of the opposition pointed out in a very hard way that this was not possible because the two party leaders had different philosophy and concept. "What national position, there is no national position, you did not present it yesterday," said irritably Antonis Samaras and added: "You say I am slanderer of the country. What should a slanderer do right next to you?"

That "cold" dialogue between the two leaders was held on the phone today, hours after their meeting. It became clear despite the expectations that during the meeting, the Greek Prime Minister had submitted neither a plan for joint government to its political opponent nor a basic framework of the position Greece would follow during the European summit. After the meeting, Antonis Samaras said, "the only possible solution is early elections", and told the Prime Minister himself that he met him only because of the critical moment for the country. "How is it possible to offend someone with whom you want to achieve agreement?" asked Antonis Samaras in conjunction with the Prime Minister’s sharp criticism against him and his party in the speech to the PASOK parliamentary group.

At the end of today's very short and very tight dialogue, Antonis Samaras said he would go to Brussels, but by himself, to defend his position on the country's rescue.

Once it became clear that the distance between the government and the opposition grew more, George Papandreou continued his meetings with the leaders of other opposition parties. The president of the far-right party LAOS George Karatzaferis defined the events as especially critical and called "the boys from Boston", i.e. the former classmates and roommates of Papandreou and Samaras, who had studied in the USA with them, to show a stronger sense of responsibility. He said that he had not made any proposal to the Prime Minister and expressed his belief that the course of events would lead Greece to early elections.

The news of the day, however, came after George Papandreou meeting with the leader of the left coalition SYRIZA. According to Alexis Tsipras, the Greek Prime Minister does not intend to declare early elections before finding a solution to the debt problem. In a statement after the meeting, the leader of SYRIZA said that the Prime Minister refused to understand that at this point the will of people and democracy would be positive arguments for the country's position in Europe.

And while the area around the Parliament was literally shaking with social resentment, Minister of Finance Evangelos Venizelos said during the debate on the bill, which will introduce the labour reserves, the payroll table and the new taxes that the measures the government was taking were necessary to avoid the worse option.

At the beginning of his speech, he said that Greece should consider more seriously and soberly what was happening in the country. Commenting on the criticism that the supervisory Troika is responsible for the state of the Greek economy the Minister said the government would have made different choices if there were such an opportunity because "correlations are firm."

He described the current situation in the country as a "war". He stressed that it was very important to implement the entire plan to enable Greece to negotiate with dignity the finding of the final solution to the issue of debt sustainability, the second bailout package and the development.

Evangelos Venizelos described the "drama" the PASOK government is going through, when confronted with the forces that supported it until the last elections, and in an effort to prove that today's difficult conditions are such as to avoid "three times more difficult " ones and to open a "window of hope" for Greece.

"Only if we will not apply the plan we are threatened by the possibility to become a protectorate of the European Union and the International Monetary Fund. Now, we have no other choice."

In an attempt to persuade the PASOK deputies to vote on the bill on Thursday, Evangelos Venizelos said that on Sunday Greece "will fight the battle of all battles" and added that without the measures provided for in the bill it would not be possible to complete the budget for this year and to make the draft budget for 2012.

Tags: PoliticsPapndreouSamarasCommon positionEuropean summitEarly elections
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