Greece's coalition leaders are due to sit down in two hours time to discuss the way forward, following the row over state broadcaster ERT's closure. The Junior partners, Evangelos Venizelos of Pasok and Fotis Kouvelis of Democratic Left, have already held a meeting to agree a joint position ahead of their crunch talks with PM Antonis Samaras. Could the government collapse? Mujtaba Rahman, European director at Eurasia Group, reckons not.Here's highlights from Rahman's latest analyst note: Importantly, neither PASOK nor Democratic Left have threatened to leave the government. Instead, they have been looking to extract certain concessions. Venizelos wants a cabinet reshuffle to actually increase his party's participation and visibility in the government (his original strategy was to shadow the government in case things went wrong; however, as the program has performed Samaras has been swallowing all of the credit). In terms of specifics, the current speculation is that PASOK is targeting the ministry of administrative reform as well as some deputy minister positions in the health and labour ministries. Likewise Kouvelis does not object to a reshuffle. Venizelos's and Kouvelis also keep repeating their desire for a renewal of the government's agreement and better "coordination of the government". In the aggregate, these statements should be interpreted as a warning to Samaras that he cannot decide on big policy issues without more active involvement and agreement of the coalition heads. Of course, the latest opinion polls show that Pasok and Democratic Left would be big losers if an election was held soon. Both are currently polling around the 4-7% mark, compared to New Democracy at 29-30%....Rahman adds: Samaras personally comes in around 43% compared to Syriza's Tsipras at 37%, depending upon the poll). And government collapse would almost certainly lead to an internal leadership challenge within PASOK.
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Saturday, June 22, 2013
Greece's coalition leaders are due to sit down in two hours time to discuss the way forward, following the row over state broadcaster ERT's closure. The Junior partners, Evangelos Venizelos of Pasok and Fotis Kouvelis of Democratic Left, have already held a meeting to agree a joint position ahead of their crunch talks with PM Antonis Samaras. Could the government collapse? Mujtaba Rahman, European director at Eurasia Group, reckons not.Here's highlights from Rahman's latest analyst note: Importantly, neither PASOK nor Democratic Left have threatened to leave the government. Instead, they have been looking to extract certain concessions. Venizelos wants a cabinet reshuffle to actually increase his party's participation and visibility in the government (his original strategy was to shadow the government in case things went wrong; however, as the program has performed Samaras has been swallowing all of the credit). In terms of specifics, the current speculation is that PASOK is targeting the ministry of administrative reform as well as some deputy minister positions in the health and labour ministries. Likewise Kouvelis does not object to a reshuffle. Venizelos's and Kouvelis also keep repeating their desire for a renewal of the government's agreement and better "coordination of the government". In the aggregate, these statements should be interpreted as a warning to Samaras that he cannot decide on big policy issues without more active involvement and agreement of the coalition heads. Of course, the latest opinion polls show that Pasok and Democratic Left would be big losers if an election was held soon. Both are currently polling around the 4-7% mark, compared to New Democracy at 29-30%....Rahman adds: Samaras personally comes in around 43% compared to Syriza's Tsipras at 37%, depending upon the poll). And government collapse would almost certainly lead to an internal leadership challenge within PASOK.
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Typing words on a computer, to be transmitted via a public network, making use of various stops on other computers on its way to the intended recipient has always meant making a potentially permanent record of our utterances.
The difference now is that we've been warned. Before this, most people were complacent enough to underestimate the implications of this.
The real threat here though is that no staff is 100% well-behaved. It would only take a 0.1% corruption rate in the police and security services to mean that thousands of people in positions of power and influence ended up under the control of organised crime simply by details of likely extra-marital affairs being passed to the mob by a very small number of corrupt officials.
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