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Monday, November 7, 2011

Ο Σταικούρας και η πρεσβεία.

Έχω κι εγώ μια ερώτηση  στον κο Σαμαρά. Αυτός ο πολύ καλός κύριος,ο κος Σταικούρας δηλαδή,που εμφανίζεται στα τηλεοπτικά παράθυρα μονίμως εκνευρισμένος και επικριτικός,ο υπεύθυνος οικονομικής πολιτικής της ΝΔ,θα παραμείνει στην θέση του για πολύ ακόμα; Μήπως θα έχει και πρωταγωνιστικό ρόλο στην νέα συγκυβέρνηση;
Ρωτάω γιατί βλέπω ότι οι προβλέψεις του περί συγκυβέρνησης που πιπίλαγε σε κάποιους περίεργους καφέδες του βγαίνουν.
Αλήθεια δεν τον πειράζει που το όνομά του κου Σταικούρα έχει εμπλακεί ως "βαθύ λαρύγγι" και μάλιστα οικειοθελώς της Αμερικανικής πρεσβείας;




REFERENCECLASSIFICATIONCREATEDLEAKEDORIGIN
09ATHENS1255CONFIDENTIAL//NOFORN7/17/2009 11:2309ATHENS1033|09ATHENS935|09THESSALONIKI31Embassy Athens
A View From the Chamber: New Democracy MPs Discuss Early
C O N F I D E N T I A L ATHENS 001255 

NOFORN 
SIPDIS 

E.O. 12958: DECL: 2019/07/17 
TAGS: PGOV, ECON, GR 
SUBJECT: A View From the Chamber: New Democracy MPs Discuss Early 
Elections, the Far Right, and Reform 

REF: A. ATHENS 1033; B. THESSALONIKI 31; C. ATHENS 935 

CLASSIFIED BY: Daniel Speckhard, Ambassador, State, EXEC; REASON: 
1.4(B), (D) 

1. (C) Summary. In an effort to take the pulse of the governing 
New Democracy (ND) party, Polcouns and Poloff on 13 July met with 
two junior deputies, Apostolos Tzitzikostas and Christos 
Staikouras, and a vice-president of the Parliament, Elsa 
Papadimitriou, to discuss the government's agenda. Each of the 
deputies was eager to demonstrate that the government of Prime 
Minister Konstantinos Karamanlis retained vitality and a commitment 
to reform. They noted that the government would be pressing ahead 
with efforts to restructure the bloated government bureaucracy and 
loss-making state-owned enterprises like the Hellenic Railway 
Organization. The two junior MPs played down the possibility of 
early elections this fall, noting Karamanlis would attempt to 
rebuild public confidence in his government and hold out until a 
potential stalemate over electing a new President forced a general 
election next March. Papadimitriou, however, made a plausible case 
for the possibility that Karamanlis could pull the trigger early in 
order to force two rounds of elections within the next year. 
Although dismissive of the populism of the rightwing Popular 
Orthodox Rally (LAOS) party, the deputies nonetheless expressed 
concern about the party's growing popularity and its ability to 
draw support from ND's ranks. All interlocutors rejected the 
possibility that Karamanlis would cooperate, formally or 
informally, with LAOS. Instead, two of them noted that a grand 
coalition with PASOK would not be out of the realm of possibilities 
if neither major party could achieve a parliamentary majority in 
the next election. End summary. 



2. (C) Polcouns and Poloff met on 13 July with Apostolos 
Tzitzikostas and Christos Staikouras, two junior New Democracy (ND) 
deputies, and with Elsa Papadimitriou, a long-serving ND deputy and 
the second of seven vice presidents of the Hellenic Parliament, to 
discuss the governing party's agenda in the wake of the European 
Parliamentary elections in June. Each in turn offered opinions 
that reflected individual interests and concerns, as well as the 
priorities of their constituencies. Tzitzikostas, who represents 
Thessaloniki's first district, displayed the most concern regarding 
the rise of the Popular Orthodox Rally (LAOS), which has made 
significant inroads, particularly in northern Greece (refs A and 
B). Staikouras, a London-trained economist from Lamia, said that 
the economic crisis dominated the concerns of his constituents, who 
paid little attention to nationalist issues. Papadimitriou's 
political pedigree stems from family ties to the former Center 
Union of George Papandreou's grandfather and namesake. She openly 
acknowledged center-left sympathies despite over 20 years as a 
member of ND and described her shift from the Papandreou's 
Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) as a "matter of aesthetics." 
She claimed that ND maintained her seat in the Argolis solely based 
her personal popularity, since the region's voter base was 
primarily center-left. 



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Timing of Elections: Anybody's Guess 

--------------------------------------------- -- 



3. (C) The media has once again been rife with rumors that Prime 
Minister Konstantinos Karamanlis was toying with the idea of 
calling another parliamentary election in September, despite ND's 
trailing PASOK in public opinion polls. Tzitzikostas and 
Staikouras, however, played down the possibility of an early 
general election this fall. Tzitzikostas, in particular, 
emphasized that a loss was a loss, irrespective of the margin. He 
argued that the government's goal was to win back the confidence of 
voters over the next six months. He noted that PASOK's election 
victory in the European Parliamentary elections in June was hollow 
because the Socialists had actually lost votes in real numbers 
compared to the September 2007 general election. (Note: This is 
sour grapes since ND also obviously lost even more votes. End 
note.) Tzitzikostas claimed that PASOK leader George Papandreou 
lacked a mandate to govern and that those who had abstained from 
voting or had voted for the rightwing Popular Orthodox Rally (LAOS) 
could be won back to ND. He noted that if ND could close the gap 
with PASOK in the opinion polls by January 2010, Papandreou would 
back out of forcing early parliamentary elections by blocking the 
election of the next President of the Republic. When Poloffs 
probed for possible presidential candidates in the event that 


President Papoulias decided not to stand for reelection, Staikouras 
noted that the Socialist politicians, former Prime Minister 
Konstantinos Simitis and former Interior Minister Alexandros 
Papadopoulos, were two names that were being bandied about in ND 
circles. Staikouras noted that like most previous presidential 
elections, bipartisan support was necessary. 



4. (C) Tzitzikostas, who hails from Thessaloniki and boasted 
close ties to the Prime Minister, claimed that Karamanlis wanted to 
be the first Prime Minister since the restoration of democracy in 
1974 to win three successive parliamentary elections. (Note: 
Karamanlis's uncle and namesake accomplished the feat by winning 
general elections in 1956, 1958, and 1961. End note.) The 
government, therefore, was planning an aggressive reform agenda for 
the summer and fall to rebuild popular support. Staikouras, 
nevertheless noted that he and other deputies had been bracing for 
early elections almost from the day that they had been elected in 
September 2007. Both he and Tzitzikostas noted that another 
scandal or unforeseen event could provoke an election with little 
warning. Tzitzikostas warned that Greece could be entering-and he 
emphasized "entering" to draw a distinction from the social unrest 
of last December-a period of political instability akin to 1989-90, 
when Greece held three parliamentary elections in eighteen months. 



5. (C) By contrast, Papadimitriou said that she could foresee a 
parliamentary election in October, followed by another in March 
2010. She looked forward to implementation of ND's election law 
passed in 2007, which would give the winning party a greater degree 
of stability. (Note: The new law is similar to the election law 
currently in force except that it allocates a premium of 50 seats 
instead 40 to the party that achieves at least 41.5 percent of the 
vote. The Greek constitution mandates that any new electoral law 
not passed with a supermajority of 200 or more come into effect two 
general elections after it is passed. End note) She claimed that 
ND would be better off losing a close fall election because it 
could leave PASOK to deal with the difficult social and economic 
situation and then reap the benefits of being in opposition when 
another election would be forced in the spring. 



--------------------------------------------- -- 

Putting the Government Back on Track 

--------------------------------------------- -- 



6. (C) Both Tzitzikostas and Staikouras were critical of the 
Prime Minister's handling of the social unrest in December 2008 and 
his failure to more quickly denounce and deal with corruption 
scandals linked to ND. Tzitzikostas condemned the decision to 
restrain the police during the riots, noting that this did more to 
damage the government's popularity-particularly among ND 
voters-than the decision to avoid casualties. Staikouras, 
meanwhile, regretted Karamanlis's delayed response to the Vatopedi 
Monastery land swap scandal, which undercut the government's claims 
to be committed to clean government. Staikouras expected, however, 
that his party would suffer less political fallout than PASOK from 
the brewing Siemens bribery scandal. He claimed that ND members 
implicated in the scandal, such as Kyriakos Mitsotakis, were tarred 
as individuals without incriminating the party as a whole. 
However, former PASOK insider Theodoros Tsoukatos's admission of 
receiving one million Deutschmarks (EUR 420,000) from Siemens in 
1999 to help finance the Socialists' election campaigns implicated 
the whole party structure (ref C). 



7. (C) Both MPs, however, sought to emphasize that ND was 
committed to reenergizing its reform effort and stressed that the 
government did not plan to wait until the fall, when the full 
Parliament came back in session. Tzitzikostas claimed that ND's 
first major task was to take on the Greece's bloated public 
sector-a view seconded by Staikouras. Getting more specific, 
Staikouras noted that the government planned to shed jobs and 
restructure the state-owned Hellenic Railway Organization (OSE). 
Noting that the railroads were hemorrhaging money, he claimed that 
OSE was losing twice as much money per day as Olympic Airways prior 
to its privatization. The government also was developing plans to 
streamline the number of "special category" jobs in Greece that 
were considered dangerous and thus qualified for early retirement. 


He hoped that measures would be adopted as soon as July or 
September at the latest. 



8. (C) Tzitzikostas and Staikouras were sanguine that the 
government could ride out any potential labor unrest, including the 
railroad strikes that have already begun. Instead, they were 
confident that voters would reward ND for taking on tough reforms. 
Staikouras claimed that most of the Greek public was ahead of 
members of Parliament regarding their willingness to suffer in the 
short term for the long term benefits that would come from serious 
structural reform. Both MPs sought to downplay the impact of the 
global financial crisis on Greece, claiming that the summer tourism 
season would not be as bad as projected. Staikouras, moreover, 
insisted that the growth in Greece's budget deficit and its 
unemployment figures remained below the EU average. 



--------------------------------------------- -------------- 

Dismissive, But Running Scared of the Far Right 

--------------------------------------------- -------------- 



9. (C) All three interlocutors were quick to dismiss LAOS as a 
long-term threat to ND. They emphasized that LAOS had a populist 
agenda with no credible policy alternatives. They noted that most 
LAOS supporters were conservatives attracted to the party as a 
protest vote against the government. Citing the party's 
demographics as evidence of its lack of a future, Papadimitriou 
claimed that 70 to 80 percent of LAOS voters were from ND; the 
majority was males over 50 years old. Tzitzikostas even claimed 
that support for LAOS would collapse when ND was once again in 
opposition. In the next breath, however, he labeled LAOS the most 
dangerous party in Greek politics because of its willingness to 
pander to Greek nationalist and xenophobic sentiment. The deputies 
acknowledged that the growth in the popularity of LAOS had come at 
ND's expense, and the governing party had done a poor job of 
countering LAOS's message. Tzitzikostas, for example, defended the 
crackdown on illegal immigration in recent weeks, but noted the 
poor timing of the government's moves because it played into the 
perception that ND feared the far right. 



10. (C) The ND deputies rejected any form of cooperation between 
their party and LAOS. They noted that even an informal coalition 
with LAOS would undermine popular support for ND. Although 
Tzitzikostas acknowledged that ND could still govern without a 
parliamentary majority as long as the opposition remained 
disunited, he said that Karamanlis would prefer to call an election 
if another deputy left or was forced out of the ND parliamentary 
group. He noted that Karamanlis would not risk being beholden to 
LAOS leader George Karatzaferis for the passage of legislation and 
remaining in power. Tzitzikostas and Papadimitriou largely 
dismissed attempts by Karatzaferis to cultivate a more moderate 
image for his party. Papadimitriou noted that about four of the 
LAOS parliamentary deputies were credible politicians, and she 
claimed she was attempting to convince them to join ND rather than 
allowing LAOS to woo disenchanted conservatives. 



--------------------------------------------- ------------------ 

A Grand Coalition: The Best, But Unlikely Solution 

--------------------------------------------- ------------------ 



11. (C) Papadimitriou described a grand coalition between ND and 
PASOK as the best solution for Greek reform efforts. Staikouras 
likewise regarded an ND-PASOK coalition as perhaps the best way to 
address the economic crisis. Papadimitriou praised the principles 
and integrity of both Karamanlis and Papandreou, claiming that 
neither of them was personally tainted by the corruption affecting 
ND and PASOK. She claimed that such a coalition could insulate 
both parties from populist and media attacks, allowing the 
government to implement unpopular, but necessary, structural 
reforms. Tying it to her scenario for an early parliamentary 
election in October, she claimed that if neither major party gained 
a parliamentary majority, a coalition between ND and PASOK offered 


the best possibility for political stability and reform. She 
dismissed public statements by both party leaders opposing such an 
option as mere posturing and claimed both Karamanlis and Papandreou 
had the nerve and intelligence to consider a grand coalition. 
Papadimitriou noted that such a government, which would probably 
last no more than a year, should concentrate on four issues: 
immigration, education reform, the economic crisis, and culture. 
The rest could be left to Brussels. 



12. (C) Turning briefly to a discussion of the Ecologist-Green 
Party, Papadimitriou described the rise of this party as "proof of 
the idiocy of ND." She lamented that her party had so far failed 
to capitalize on the growing environmentalist movement by co-opting 
some of its issues. At a minimum, she said Karamanlis needed to 
create a separate Environment Ministry not tied to Public Works. 
She acknowledged that PASOK had done a better job of advocating 
"green" policies, but she nonetheless regarded Karamanlis as a more 
capable policymaker compared to his Socialist opponent. Having 
known Papandreou since he was nine, Papadimitriou largely dismissed 
his effectiveness as a leader. "Papandreou is only collecting our 
failure," she said. 



--------------------------------------------- --------------- 

Comment: Positive Words, But Can ND Deliver? 

--------------------------------------------- --------------- 



13. (C) Comment: Despite the private nature of the 
conversations, these MPs tended to echo the party line regarding 
the economic crisis and its impact on Greece. Although they 
attempted to sound tough on reform, it remains unclear that ND will 
have the stomach to force through structural reforms that risk even 
more popular discontent among a fickle Greek public with the 
numbers of unemployed growing and the prospect of another election 
looming ever closer. Moreover, although they appeared to have no 
sympathy for Karatzaferis and some ND members who have suggested 
cooperation between the two parties, concern that LAOS is cutting 
into ND's support among more conservative, nationalist voters could 
lead the governing party to seek to blunt LAOS's popularity by 
taking tougher stances on nationalist issues. The crackdown on 
illegal immigration stems only in part from LAOS's hardline stance 
and its subsequent electoral success, since the government's 
reaction had been evolving for months. Nevertheless, as ND seeks 
to rebuild popular support, Karamanlis might resort to adopting 
tougher positions vis-C -vis Turkey and Macedonia to avoid being 
further out flanked by the far right. End Comment. 
SPECKHARD 


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