* Parties dig their heels over austerity
* Radical left seen gaining if new poll held
* President meets three main parties
By Karolina Tagaris and Lefteris Papadimas
ATHENS, May 13 (Reuters) – Greece’s president met party
leaders on Sunday in a final bid to cobble together a coalition
and avert a repeat election, but the veteran politician’s effort
looked set to fail because of deep splits over an EU/IMF rescue
plan.
Leaders of the three biggest parties, each of whom had
failed to form a government in the past week, convened at the
presidential mansion, where President Karolos Papoulias has a
last opportunity to implore them to form a coalition before he
must call a new election, probably in mid June.
Conservative leader Antonis Samaras, who placed first in the
election last week but fell far short of a majority, expressed
hope a deal could still be reached.
“We have a mandate to cooperate to change policies but at
the same time remain in the euro. A mandate for a viable
government, at least until the European elections (in 2014),” he
said outside the presidential mansion.
A week ago voters humiliated the parties that have dominated
Greece for generations – Samaras’s New Democracy and the PASOK
party of former Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos, who
jointly negotiated a bailout that requires deep cuts in public
spending.
Polls since the election show the balance of power tipping
even further towards opponents of the bailout, who were divided
among several small parties but now appear to be rallying behind
Alexis Tsipras, a 37-year-old former Communist student leader.
If the vote is repeated, Tsipras’s SYRIZA party is tipped to
place first, winning an automatic extra 50 seats at the expense
of Samaras.
If the next government rejects the bailout, EU official say
that would meant the end of loans that Athens needs to stave off
bankruptcy and its ejection from the euro single currency.
Polls show an overwhelming majority of Greeks reject the
bailout but want to keep the euro.
Samaras and Venizelos have offered a broad coalition that
would include SYRIZA and try to renegotiate some bailout terms,
but Tsipras rejects that.
“It is obvious that there is an effort to bring about a
government that will implement the bailout. We are not
participating in such a government,” SYRIZA spokesman Panos
Skourletis said on Saturday.
Another small leftist party could provide enough seats to
form a government with New Democracy and PASOK, but has said it
will not do so unless the coalition also includes SYRIZA.
Greeks seem resigned to returning to the polls.
“Why would we believe they’ll agree on something? All they
care about is being in power and we’re sitting here not even
able to pay our electricity bills,” said Maria Kissou, 53, a
corner shop owner in Athens. “Let us go to elections again.”
Kissou voted on May 6 for Tsipras.
“He’s young, I like him because at least he’s trying to
renegotiate with the Europeans,” Kissou said.
Supporters of the two establishment parties will be hoping
that if a new election is held, Greeks will be frightened of the
prospect of leaving the euro and return to the fold.
RUSSIAN ROULETTE
“Country on a dangerous path,” conservative daily
Kathimerini warned on its front page.
Papoulias will also meet leaders of parliament’s small
parties, which for the first time include the far right Golden
Dawn. In one of the unfolding drama’s many sub-plots, Greeks
will watch with interest to see how the president, a revered
82-year-old veteran of the World War II anti-Nazi resistance,
receives a group whose members give Nazi-style salutes.
The constitution sets no deadline for Papoulias to complete
his search for a deal and he has given no indication how long he
will spend trying before he calls a new election.
Centre-left daily Ethnos warned on the front page of its
Sunday edition that politicians were playing “Russian roulette”
with an economy in its fifth straight year of recession.
One in five Greeks – including more than half of the working
aged youth – are unemployed, and the government’s coffers could
be empty as soon as June if no fresh cash comes from the EU and
IMF.
While most Greeks oppose the bailouts, they overwhelmingly
back the euro. Some 78.1 percent want the new government to do
whatever it takes to keep their country in the currency, a poll
by Kappa Research for To Vima daily showed.
European leaders say Athens can remain in the euro only if
it sticks to the pledges to clean up its finances that it made
to secure the bailout. Opponents say those harsh terms are
making the situation worse by strangling the economy.
Tsipras says EU leaders are bluffing, and will not push
Greece out of the euro because of the damage this would cause to
the rest of the single currency zone.
But officials in Brussels who once refused to discuss any
country leaving the euro now talk about a Greek exit as a real,
if painful, possibility. A prospect once seen as devastating for
the continent’s financial system is viewed as more manageable
since banks wrote off much of their Greek debt this year.
