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Exit from debt crisis or retreat to uncertainty wager of Greek elections: socialist leader

Xinhua, January 11, 2015 Adjust font size:

The key wager of the upcoming Jan. 25 elections in Greece is whether the country will exit the five-year debt crisis and return to normality or whether Greeks will retreat to uncertainty, a senior official said on Sunday.

"It is of greater importance in this electoral battle the direction the country will head to over the next several years instead of who will be in power," Evangelos Venizelos, the leader of the socialist PASOK party and incumbent Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, said during a press conference.

"The question is whether we will move forwards to exit the crisis, the memoranda and troika's supervision to a new relationship and we will return to international financing markets and normality or whether we will take steps backwards and the sacrifices of Greek people go to waste," he stressed.

Greece escaped bankruptcy with the support of European Union and International Monetary Fund creditors under a bailout program which expires in late February this year.

After a painful austerity and reform program the country posted positive fiscal adjustment results, exiting a six-year recession and started to gradually return to markets last year, but Greek people have still not reaped the benefits in everyday life.

The outgoing two-party coalition government of the conservative New Democracy (ND) party and PASOK presents itself as a guarantor of stability and progress, when the main Radical Left SYRIZA party has caused concern with its rhetoric over a more aggressive negotiation over the terms of the post-bailout collaboration with lenders.

Despite scenarios of a possible Grexit if SYRIZA wins the elections this time, the party holds a lead in all recent opinion surveys. ND of Prime Minister Antonis Samaras follows second, while PASOK vies for the third place against the neo-fascist Golden Dawn (Chryssi Avgi) party and the centrist River (Potami) party.

With no party set to win outright parliamentary majority, as it had happened in the 2012 elections, according to pollsters, all sides were already examining the post-election partnerships to form a new ruling coalition.

The party which will rank third will hold the role of the guarantor of the nation's stability, Venizelos noted on Sunday, calling on all parties to help reach national consensus after the elections. Endit