SOUND FAMILIAR? New leader, a former foreign minister, scion of a political family, takes over in wake of a corruption scandal with an economy tipping into recession after 15 successful years of growth. His first painful budget has to tackle the country’s ballooning deficit of over 6 per cent of GDP, double the EU limit. Unemployment at 9 per cent is rising sharply . . .
But George Papandreou, leader of Greece’s socialist Pasok party and winner by a landslide of the weekend’s general election, is no Brian Cowen. The US-educated Mr Papandreou, whose father and grandfather were also prime ministers, is currently head of the Socialist International, a sociologist by training, and an admirer of the Swedish social model. As foreign minister he engineered a breakthrough in the relationship with the country’s old enemy, Turkey.
He has promised a €3 billion stimulus package with significant aid for the poor, and paid for by hefty increases in tax on the rich. That will mean early talks with the European Commission about extending the country’s 2010 deadline for getting its deficit below 3 per cent. With corruption central to the campaign, Mr Papandreou promised to introduce merit-based appointments to the Ottoman-like state bureaucracy, a “revolution of transparency” in financial decisions, and electoral reforms to curb the role of money in politics.
In the wake of the drubbing a week ago of Germany’s Social Democrats, Mr Papandreou’s victory – a 10-seat majority in the 300-seat parliament – represents, along with a recent victory in Portugal, a glimmer of hope for Europe’s beleaguered socialist forces.
His rival, outgoing prime minister Costas Karamanlis, had called a snap election midway through his term to shore up his one-vote majority. But his hairshirt two-year austerity plan with public sector pay freeze and privatisation was too much for voters already deeply sceptical of a government heavily implicated in scandal: a notorious land swap deal with a monastery; a wire-tapping scandal; a ferry contracts scandal; one involving multinational Siemens; a sex one; a bonds one . . . And then the fires which swept the country, widely blamed on greedy landlords hoping to sell out to developers.
Mr Karamanlis, himself the nephew of former prime minister Constantine Karamanlis, has now resigned as leader of his New Democracy and is likely to be succeeded by foreign minister Dora Bakoyannis, daughter of yet another former PM. There is bound to be a Greek word for it ending in -ocracy or -archy.