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Athens News Agency: News in English, 09-09-05
CONTENTS
[01] Party reactions to PM's speech
[01] Party reactions to PM's speech
The smaller opposition parties united in criticising Prime Minister
Costas Karamanlis' speech at Thessaloniki International Fair (TIF) on
Saturday, each expressing reservations about the premier's call for
further reforms and changes.
According to the Communist Party of Greece (KKE), the prime minister
"has once again confessed that the anti-working-class measures have
been decided in advance, regardless of whether the next government is
that of New Democracy (ND) or main opposition PASOK." It said they
would once again seek to support the profits of big business by
drastically reducing the income of working class families, labour,
insurance and pension rights, and cutting back social spending.
The right-wing Popular Orthodox Rally (LAOS) party accused Karamanlis
of "threatening" to take brave decisions after six years of governing
the country and strongly questioned the premier's pledge to clamp down
on corruption:
"He is obviously admitting that until today, the decisions he generally
took were not brave but cowardly. As for his reference to decisively
fighting corruption, it sounds like a joke," a party announcement said,
pointing out that the government had twice shut down Parliament and
thus preventing investigation of cases in which his government
ministers were implicated.
An announcement of the Coalition of the Left, Movements and Ecology
(SYN) party, meanwhile, said the structural reforms referred to by the
premier were nothing more than a continuation and deepening of the
policies followed in the past years that had led to the current
economic crisis.
"It is the policy that unbearably compresses the income of the weakest
in society, heightens unemployment, wipes out farmers, shuts down small
and medium-sized businesses and dismantles the social insurance systems
and labour relations," it read.
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