Analysis: Consensus after confidence - The Best from Greece

THE arduous effort to draft a roadmap toward an interparty understanding on Greece’s future through a national unity government will be even more difficult for George Papandreou than his stunning success in surviving a dramatic confidence vote.

 

Under the klieg lights of international attention, but with main opposition New Democracy absent in the debate until the final votes, Papandreou triumphantly won the confidence vote without any defections from his parliamentary group.

 

The government received the votes of all 152 of its MPs, plus that of independent MP Louka Katseli, who had been expelled from the Pasok parliamentary group when, during passage of a recent law, she voted down a single clause deregulating labour relations.

 

With a total of 145 votes, all four opposition parties voted the government down.

 

Two independent MPs who hade threatened to vote down the government, Milena Apostolaki and Elsa Papadimitriou, were absent for the vote. Apostolaki, a former Pasok MP, declared herself independent when Papandreou first announced his referendum.

 

Immediately after the vote, Papandreou rewarded Katesli, an old family friend who was highly critical of the government’s recent performance in her speech, by readmitting her in his parliamentary group.

 

The success in the confidence vote came after Papandreou heeded the warnings of several Pasok MPs who had threatened to vote down the government if Papandreou would not commit himself to step down in the immediate future in favour of a government.

 

 

Though he promised to move to create a coalition government immediately, he made no pledge to resign.

 

“I will visit the president tomorrow with the aim of creating a government with the broadest possible support,” Papandreou said.

 

He said he will begin consultations with other parties, under the auspices of the president, to agree on a new unity government’s targets, its duration, the composition of the cabinet, and the prime minister.

 

Papandreou gave no indication that he intends to resign, nor did he make specific commitments that could ensure the participation of other parties, except perhaps of rightwing Radical Orthodox Rally (Laos), which has long been clamouring for a coalition government.

 

Laos, which has 16 MPs, and Dora Bakoyannis' centre-right Democratic Alliance, which has 4 MPs, indicated after Mr Papandreou's speech that they would cooperate in a new coalition, Reuters reported.

 

The vague, noncommittal framework set by the premier virtually guaranteed a priori that New Democracy, based on its prior conditions, would not be on board. Such an eventuality will undermine the whole effort.

ND leader Antonis Samaras has demanded a brief transitional government, without politicians, invested with the sole authority of ratifying the bailout deal and calling elections by year’s end.

 

“It must be a government that is the guarantor of the interests and wealth of the people,” Papandreou said, charging that a government of technocrats, which Samaras proposed, would only serve vested interests.

 

The prime minister rejected Samaras’ demand for elections within six weeks as a danger to national interests.

 

Papandreou’s speech seemed to hint that he intends to stay in power until he oversees a series of steps to implement all the aspects of the bailout, and then hold elections at an undetermined point in the future.

 

Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos later said he expects elections to be held by the end of February 2012. “The country can collapse in a single moment,” he said, ruling out a quick run to the polls.

 

Papandreou’s apparent refusal to resign gives him sweeping control of the process, as President Karolos Papoulias has no authority over the formation of a government unless the government loses its parliamentary majority or resigns.

 

“The solution is one – to achieve interparty support for this agreement with a strong, enhanced parliamentary majority, under a strong government,” Papandreou said, noting that Greece’s partners must be assured everything will be done to implement the October 27 bailout agreement.

 

Papandreou said he will seek a “mandate for the broadest possible political agreement, and for the creation of a government that reflects that”.

 

 

The immediate agenda of the Greek government, coalition or otherwise, will include: ratifying the new loan agreement, entering negotiations with the troika on the new memorandum, and negotiations to conclude the PSI (private sector involvement) in the debt writedown agreement with bondholders.

 

Venizelos also listed as urgent the tasks of ensuring the portfolio of pension funds, submitting the budget and the revised medium term fiscal plan, and securing the 35bn euros in the bailout deal for bank fluidity

 

During parliamentary debate, Papandreou defended his ill-fated proposal for a referendum on the bailout as an act of democratic heroism. He said it would have been a “sovereign, democratic and free” expression of the will of the Greek people, and he attacked his critics as hypocritical. “The G20 must say, ‘Yes, there are markets, but first of all there are peoples’,” he said.

 

Papandreou’s sudden, unilateral announcement of a referendum on the October 27 deal to save the euro enraged France and Germany.

 

The Franco-German ultimatum – that Greece would be expelled from the euro if it turned down the deal – was perceived by Greeks as a major offense, and it stirred a deep and abiding sense of national humiliation and rage.

 

Papandreou pulled all the stops in pushing to secure the confidence vote, from glowing appraisals of his political past to gushing, emotional invocations of his late father and grandfather, both former prime ministers.

 

Papandreou depicted himself as a visionary whose ideas and policies – from rapprochement with Turkey to decriminalisation of drug use – were always ahead of their time.

 

“I have broken taboos for the good of the country. I did it with the referendum, to leave Byzantium and go back to the direct democracy of ancient Greece,” he declared.

 

“If I leave power, at least I will do so as an anti-authoritarian.”

 

Papandreou even marshalled his ancestors in a visceral pitch to his deputies.

“I inherited from my grandfather only a watch. I inherited from my father, expressly in his will, only his name. That is greater wealth than villas,” he said.