The month started with an ascertainment: That the “unemployment is a treacherous and tough opponent of the society, undermining the dreams of the youth” – so said Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras on Monday September 1st, stressing that in order to tackle unemployment “we need to take action now that we enter the recovery process.”
As we, Greeks, are entering the economic recovery process, I suppose that we should be happy to read about all the press reports about a new bailout – even though smaller than the previous two. It should be around 10 billion euro and will certainly be accompanied by another Memorandum of Understanding with new and additional austerity measures and fiscal consolidation fireworks.
Τomorrow, Tuesday, the representatives of the Greek coalition government will start negotiations with the Troika. The country’s lenders will evaluate the Greek program and its implementations. The Greek government is content with the progress and intents to ask some relaxation of the austerity measures: discounts in unified property tax (ENFIA), discount in heating oil tax, discount in solidarity tax, extension of the number of installments – up to 100- so that citizens/debtors repay their debts to the state and the insurance funds.
The Greek government is struggling to achieve some relaxation in the strict austerity measures as the households have reached their financial limits. Furthermore – and most important – it looks as if early elections are not far away from here.
In a public opinion poll conducted by Palmos Analysis for website tvxs.gr.
Samaras’ Nea Dimokratia gets just 17.7%, while main opposition left-wing SYRIZA is way ahead with 25.8%. Samaras coalition partner PASOK gets roughly 3%.
Constantly third party is extremist Golden Dawn with 8.7.
To Potami gets 2.3%, KKE 3.5%, Independent Greeks 2.5%
I can’t tell how trustworthy is the poll as the website is politically close to SYRIZA. However fact is that the ENFIA-property tax that charges with several hundreds euro everything on soil or concrete has certainly disappointed many ND and PASOK voters.
Don’t get fooled by the calender and pictures with empty sunbeds. It may be September 1st, autumn, so to say, but temperatures are still high. At 30+ degrees Celsius. Summer is here to stay! And we expect a couple of million tourists still packing their coffers for Greece. For the sake of economic recovery. For the sake to combat the treacherous enemy.
Kalo Mina 🙂
