Greece’s Socialist leader George Papandreou trounced the governing conservatives in a landslide election victory after a campaign focused on dramatically different visions of how to dig the country out of its worst economic crisis in years.
Papandreou, a 57-year-old former foreign minister whose father and grandfather were both prime ministers, had insisted that Greek Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis’ plans for austerity to face the international financial crisis were wrong. Instead, he offered a more optimistic solution, saying he would inject up to 3 billion euros (US$4.4 billion) to reinvigorate Greece’s economy.
After a campaign fought almost exclusively on economic issues — and after widespread anger over repeated scandals had already whittled away support for Karamanlis’ conservative government — voters were persuaded.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Results from 98.92 percent of votes counted yesterday showed Papandreou’s Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) storming to victory with 43.94 percent, with Karamanlis’ New Democracy trailing with 33.49 percent — the party’s worst electoral showing ever.
The result gives PASOK a solid majority, 160 seats in the 300-member parliament, bringing it back to power after five years of conservative governance.
Papandreou’s victory, along with a recent election win by socialists in Portugal, bucks a European trend that has seen a conservative surge in the continent’s powerhouse economies, including most recently in Germany, where Chancellor Angela Merkel won re-election last week.
US President Barack Obama was among the first international leaders to congratulate Papandreou, telephoning him on Sunday night, the White House said.
Humbled by his stinging defeat, Karamanlis, 53, resigned as party leader and said a new chief was needed for the party founded by his late uncle Constantine Karamanlis 35 years ago.
Papandreou now must deal with a faltering economy that is expected to contract this year after years of strong growth, while the budget deficit will probably exceed 6 percent of economic output.
Despite his plans for a stimulus package, the new Socialist government will likely have to borrow heavily just to service the ballooning debt — set to exceed 100 percent of GDP this year — and keep paying public sector wages and pensions.
Papandreou has pledged to limit borrowing by reducing government waste and going after tax dodgers.
“Greeks and the electorate do not have any illusions that a magic change will take place tomorrow morning on the economy,” political analyst Anthony Livanios said. “They know it’s a difficult economic crisis ahead, and they will look for a credible handling and a credible solution” from the new government.
In his first speech after being elected, Papandreou warned Greeks they faced tough times.
“Nothing is going to be easy. It will take a lot of hard work. I will always be upfront with the Greek people so we can solve the country’s problems together,” he said. “Today, we are setting Greece on a new course ... a course of recovery, progress and creativity … I know the potential of the country very well, a potential being drowned by corruption, favoritism, lawlessness and waste.”
Greece’s budget deficit is well over the EU ceiling of 3 percent of economic output, and the economy minister recently conceded it could reach 8 percent this year.
The public debt is set to surpass 100 percent of GDP while unemployment rose to 8.6 percent in June.
Livanios said Papandreou’s idea of stimulating the economy as a way out of the crisis could work.
“It remains to be seen now how effectively PASOK’s plan will be applied. But I do believe there’s a credible plan that focuses on reinvigorating the small entrepreneur, on putting a better order in the taxation system,” he said.
AFGHAN CHILD: A court battle is ongoing over if the toddler can stay with Joshua Mast and his wife, who wanted ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ for her Major Joshua Mast, a US Marine whose adoption of an Afghan war orphan has spurred a years-long legal battle, is to remain on active duty after a three-member panel of Marines on Tuesday found that while he acted in a way unbecoming of an officer to bring home the baby girl, it did not warrant his separation from the military. Lawyers for the Marine Corps argued that Mast abused his position, disregarded orders of his superiors, mishandled classified information and improperly used a government computer in his fight over the child who was found orphaned on the battlefield in rural Afghanistan
STICKING TO DEFENSE: Despite the screening of videos in which they appeared, one of the defendants said they had no memory of the event A court trying a Frenchman charged with drugging his wife and enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her screened videos of the abuse to the public on Friday, to challenge several codefendants who denied knowing she was unconscious during their actions. The judge in the southern city of Avignon had nine videos and several photographs of the abuse of Gisele Pelicot shown in the courtroom and an adjoining public chamber, involving seven of the 50 men accused alongside her husband. Present in the courtroom herself, Gisele Pelicot looked at her telephone during the hour and a half of screenings, while her ex-husband
NEW STORM: investigators dubbed the attacks on US telecoms ‘Salt Typhoon,’ after authorities earlier this year disrupted China’s ‘Flax Typhoon’ hacking group Chinese hackers accessed the networks of US broadband providers and obtained information from systems that the federal government uses for court-authorized wiretapping, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on Saturday. The networks of Verizon Communications, AT&T and Lumen Technologies, along with other telecoms, were breached by the recently discovered intrusion, the newspaper said, citing people familiar with the matter. The hackers might have held access for months to network infrastructure used by the companies to cooperate with court-authorized US requests for communications data, the report said. The hackers had also accessed other tranches of Internet traffic, it said. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs
EYEING THE US ELECTION: Analysts say that Pyongyang would likely leverage its enlarged nuclear arsenal for concessions after a new US administration is inaugurated North Korean leader Kim Jong-un warned again that he could use nuclear weapons in potential conflicts with South Korea and the US, as he accused them of provoking North Korea and raising animosities on the Korean Peninsula, state media reported yesterday. Kim has issued threats to use nuclear weapons pre-emptively numerous times, but his latest warning came as experts said that North Korea could ramp up hostilities ahead of next month’s US presidential election. In a Monday speech at a university named after him, the Kim Jong-un National Defense University, he said that North Korea “will without hesitation use all its attack