George Papandreou won by 153 votes to 144 after announcing he intended to hold power-sharing talks from Saturday and signalled that he was ready to quit after two years in power.Just a minute. Wasn't he ready to go if he wins the vote immediately? But then he has been about to resign for almost as long as he has been Prime Minister. Then again, is he really in power?
To be fair, others think that he is about to resign after negotiating a government of (some) unity. Reuters says:
Papandreou told parliament that he would go to the Greek president on Saturday to discuss formation of a broader-based government that would secure the euro zone bailout, adding that he was willing to discuss who would head a new administration.The leader of the opposition, Antonis Samaras, still thinks that there ought to be an election not a unity government and it looks like Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos may well be the one to take over if Papandreou actually does resign this time.
George Papandreou seems to share the craftiness of Odysseus who was also pretty good at at getting out of tight corners and much admired for it..
ReplyDeleteI happened to be in Crete at the time his late father, Andreas, was elected. The area was a great stronghold of his PASOK party. From my very imperfect understanding of Greek, I did pick up that the great selling point of PASOK was "Allaghi" (Change). So it was a sort of "things can only get better" campaign. You could say that Papandreou pere was a sort of Blair before his time. Greece's national debt went up from 20% of GDP to over 80% during his 3 terms of office - so our Tony may have got his inspiration from the cradle of democracy.
He could not be in it for the money surely, not an honest to goodness Greek politician! Heaven help us!
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