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May 8th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda
New Democracy leader Antonis Samaras said Monday his efforts to form a “national
salvation” administration had failed, meaning that Syriza, as the
runner-up in Sunday’s election, would now be tasked with forming a
government.
“I did whatever I could to secure a result but it was impossible,”
the 60-year-old Mr Samaras said in a televised address after a day of
separate meetings with fellow leaders.
Mr Samaras was rebuffed by Syriza and the small Democratic Left group, while
the nationalist Independent Greeks and the Communist party refused to even
meet with him.
Third-placed socialist party Pasok, which was formerly in a coalition with New
Democracy, agreed to co-operate but only if the leftists also joined.
The snub to Mr Samaras suggests that Greece’s political parties are paying
more attention to the punishing message sent by voters fed up with austerity
measures than to worries about the future of the euro or warnings from
Berlin and Brussels.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the chief proponent of austerity as the main
way out of the eurozone crisis, said Monday it was “of utmost importance”
that Greece stuck to its reform path, although conceding this was “difficult”.
A spokesman for the European Commission said Brussels “hopes and expects
that the future government of Greece will respect the engagements that
Greece has entered into.”
Tsipras, who described the election results as a “message of overthrow”,
has said he would seek to form a left-wing coalition to reject the “barbaric”
measures of the EU-IMF loan agreement that saved Greece from fiscal collapse.
A new government has to be formed by May 17 or new elections will be called.
The country, in its fifth year of recession with unemployment at 20 per cent,
is committed to finding in June another 11.5 billion euros ($15 billion) in
savings over the next two years.
New Democracy and Pasok, which have alternated in power since 1974, saw their
share of the vote collapse to 32.1 per cent on Sunday from 77.4 per cent at
the last election as voters supported instead a raft of anti-austerity
parties.
This left the two parties, which favour sticking to the bail-out but with
easier terms, with 149 MPs in the 300-seat parliament, insufficient for a
rerun of the outgoing coalition led by technocrat Lucas Papademos.
Instead, voters angry after two years of cuts handed parties wanting to tear
up the agreements a total of 151 parliamentary seats between them, including
the leftist Syriza, which with 52 seats relegated Pasok to third place.
The others included Golden Dawn with 21 seats, the right-wing Independent
Greeks with 33 MPs and the communist KKE with 26.
Berenberg Bank economist Holger Schmieding warned there was a risk that “Europe
could turn off the flow of support funds and thus force Greece to leave the
euro”.
Economist Guillaume Menuet of Citi said there was “significant potential”
for Greece to miss its next round of targets and a 50-to-75-percent chance
of what he called a “Grexit” within 12-18 months.
Source: AFP
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