George Papandreou has
enjoyed a lucrative stint on the international lecture circuit since being
forced from office in 2011 at the height of Greece’s sovereign debt crisis.
Now, the former prime minister is preparing to jump back into politics as
leader of a “wild card” party that could swing the outcome of the country’s
snap general election on January 25th.
One opinion poll
published last week suggested Mr Papandreou’s group could win 4-5 per cent of
the vote, taking a small but critical percentage from the current frontrunner,
the hard-left Syriza party. If so, that could hand victory to the centre-right
New Democracy party of premier Antonis Samaras.
The prospect of a
Syriza victory has rattled investors in recent weeks, with concerns the party
would cancel the country’s international bailout and halt payment of foreign
debt.
Mr Papandreou could
also take votes from Pasok itself and To Potami (the river), a moderate left
party formed last year. “The election will be a test of Mr Papandreou’s pulling
power with undecided voters ... It will be hard for a new party to gain
traction, but it helps that he’s adept at social media,” said one Athens
pollster. “It’s quite possible he could play a decisive role in this election.”
Few analysts would
have predicted a political comeback for Mr Papandreou, given his abrupt
departure. He left office in November 2011 after his controversial proposal for
a referendum on the country’s European future was rubbished by fellow European
leaders, including Germany’s Angela Merkel, who threatened to let Greece drop
out of the euro zone.
Greece accepted an
international bailout in 2010, six months after Mr Papandreou took office. Yet
he shrugged off responsibility for the country’s financial collapse, instead
accusing the previous centre-right government of borrowing recklessly to
finance its policies, while claiming Greek interest groups had undermined his
attempts at reform.
Since his resignation,
the former prime minister has spent much of his time lecturing on crisis
management and the politics of austerity at US and Scandinavian universities
and addressing gatherings of fund managers and bankers.
He has kept a low
profile in Athens, retaining his parliamentary seat in the 2012 election but
sitting on the socialists’ backbenches, rarely speaking out. Now Mr Papandreou
is accused by Pasok stalwarts of trying to destroy Pasok, which held power
almost uninterruptedly for over 20 years from 1981, because of his rivalry with
Evangelos Venizelos, the outgoing deputy prime minister and current Pasok
leader.
In a recent letter to
Mr Venizelos published on his website, Mr Papandreou said Pasok had lost touch
with its popular base and was “going nowhere”. He proposed holding a party
congress followed by a leadership election in which grassroots party supporters
could participate.
Mr Venizelos, who has
suffered a steady decline in Pasok’s popularity since he became leader in 2011,
rejected the idea. “It’s clear the politicians have become disconnected from an
electorate that’s exhausted by austerity and angry at the old political
system,” said the Papandreou aide. “We’ll be getting back to the grassroots on
this campaign, trying to give people hope.” Support for Pasok has shrunk to
historic lows. It finished fourth in May’s European elections - behind the
neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party - with 8.2 per cent of the vote and surveys put its
support at 4-6 per cent.
(Πηγή: irishtimes.com)
