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| Screengrab taken from Antena TV shows Kanelli, a female MP for the Greek Communist party, reeling after being slapped by Golden Dawn’s Kasidiaris during a talk show |
Ten days before elections that could herald Greece’s exit from the eurozone, a television advertisement from the New Democracy party set in the future showed schoolchildren asking their teacher why they were no longer in the currency zone.
“Greece needs a party that is responsible,” the gloomy advert concludes.
It forms part of New Democracy leader Antonis Samaras’s attempt to prevent a repeat of the last elections on May 6 when some 70% of voters supported parties opposed to more austerity measures.
The cuts, which have involved slashing pensions and wages, are the price for two huge bailouts from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and European institutions that have kept the heavily endebted country solvent.
Official figures released yesterday showed the unemployment rate hitting 21.9% of the workforce in March. The economy is forecast to shrink sharply in 2012 for the fifth year running.
The uncertainty and prospect of a eurozone exit have made life extremely difficult for Greek companies, many of which are forced to pay up front for imports instead of on credit.
Shortages of medicines have already been reported.
Many of the parties that won such huge support last month, most notably the second-placed Syriza leftists, want to renegotiate or even tear up the terms of the bailouts.
If that happens, the flow of funds will stop, meaning the Greek Treasury will run out of money and default on its debts, which would likely lead to Greece’s exit from the eurozone.
The fear is that in setting such a precedent, other “periphery” eurozone members with similar problems may also be forced out, not least Spain, the area’s fourth-largest economy, which is struggling to support its banks.
Germany, the eurozone’s main paymaster, has however stood firm in its position that austerity is the only solution to the crisis.
It has rejected growing pressure to prioritise growth and resisted calls from other eurozone countries to help other countries borrow money at cheaper rates by issuing joint eurobonds.
Alexis Tsipras, the youthful head of Syriza – running neck-and-neck in opinion polls with New Democracy – has said that despite rejecting more cuts he wants to stay in the euro, as do around 80% of Greeks, polls show.
On Wednesday he warned that if Greece and other European nations continued on the path of austerity, “the results will be catastrophic for societies, the global economy and also for the euro”.
New Democracy and Pasok, the main socialist party, also want the IMF and the EU to cut Greece more slack, but they have sought to portray Tsipras as immature and his campaign promises as half-baked.
“On June 17 it is not just the euro that is at stake, but our place in Europe,” Samaris, 62, said in a speech yesterday in northern Greece.
Another of the parties that did well on May 6 was Chryssi Avgi (Golden Dawn), a neo-Nazi party whose leader Nikos Michaloliakos has denied there were gas chambers at Auschwitz and has whipped up anti-immigrant feeling.
Six days after two of its MPs were briefly detained by police over an assault on a Pakistani man, television images showed its spokesman and lawmaker Ilias Kasidiaris assaulting two leftist MPs during a live debate yesterday.
Athens prosecutors have ordered the arrest of the MP, Ilias Kasidiaris, for alleged attempted grievous bodily harm after the images showed him hitting female communist lawmaker Liana Kanelli three times in the face.
The incident, which can be seen at http://tinyurl.com/c425jfl, shows Kasidiaris throwing a glass of water at Rena Dourou from the leftist Syriza party before slapping and punching Kanelli.
Kasidiaris later phoned the television channel, accusing Kanelli of having assaulted him first and saying that the channel had doctored the images.
Kasidiaris is also involved in a court case due to resume on Monday over a brutal 2007 mugging.