Greece: New Finance Minister Will Be as Unpopular as Predecessor

 

 By Costas Paris

Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou may have managed to keep his socialist party intact by replacing Finance Minister George Papaconstantinou, the architect of the most unpopular economic measures in Greece’s modern history, but there is little doubt his new government will remain deeply unpopular and that he will be forced to early elections.
Evangelos Venizelos, the new finance minister, is a Socialist party heavyweight dating back to the 1980s who knows how to strike a strike a balance among competing functions.
But in his first trip to Brussels later this month he will be told in not so polite terms that if Greece is to avoid default he will have to push through parliament a staggering €28 billion in new austerity measures, including a slew of new taxes and spending cuts. What’s more, he must guarantee their implementation.
A senior party official who has been involved in many electoral campaigns said Mr. Venizelos should expect to lose half of his popularity at the end of this month when the measures are voted in parliament and thereafter “he will basically become a hated public figure like Mr. Papaconstantinou.”
The new government will be greeted by an expected protest of tens of thousands of Athenians outside parliament on Sunday and an even bigger rally when the measures are voted upon on June 30. There are plans to encircle parliament to prevent deputies from voting.
Political analysts agree that Mr. Papandreou will be forced to early elections this year which he is going to lose by a big margin. They also agree that he’ll stay in history as the prime minister who only managed to push back by a few months a messy debt restructuring or a default of a euro-zone member.