No early elections says Venizelos
- Written by E.Tsiliopoulos
Talking to Alpha radio station this morning, PASOK leader Evangelos Venizelos mentioned that the government needs time to complete its work on the country's recovery.
PASOK president and government VP Evangelos Venizelos believes there will not be an early election, regardless whether his party will shrink to the point of extinction in the upcoming European parliamentary elections.
Talking to Alpha radio station this morning, Venizelos mentioned that the government needs time to complete its work on the country's recovery. Interestingly enough, he denied that he ever set a dilemma about the connection between his party's percentages and its stay in the government.
It's been a few weeks since he set what most pundits interpret the dilemma “PASOK, or instability” as a “political blackmail”. He warned that if the Olive coalition (PASOK's evolution for this election) gets a percentage in the low single digits, his party will not remain in the government. Which means that the government will probably fall and early elections will have to be called.
A veteran politician, Venizelos was cunning enough to set the “blackmail”, allow it to make voters think about it for a while and then take it back, as soon as he saw a danger in the government stability setting in.
Turning it around, PASOK president claimed that his intention to visit the President of the republic after the elections doesn't have his party's figures attached as a precondition. “I will visit the President either way, to discuss certain initiatives needed for social cohesion”.
In his radio interview, Venizelos was asked about the recent controversy from the Financial Times piece about the background of the notorious Cannes meeting in the Autumn of 2011 where, according to the article, then PM Papandreou was under tremendous amount of pressure from Chancellor Merkel and then President Sarkozy to take back his commitment for a referendum in Greece concerning the memorandum terms.
He avoided the question by saying “there'll be time to talk about that in the future”, because a public debate at this moment would be hurtful for the country in the middle of ongoing negotiations with the European partners. He even attacked the newspaper, noting that the FT were never fond of the EU and never supported Greece's efforts to come out of recession.
A couple of days before the first round of local elections and ten days before the crucial European ones, Venizelos is giving the ultimate fight for his political survival. If PASOK gets below 5%, his position will be dire, not just in the coalition government, but also within his party, if that still exists on May 26.
