Athens News Agency: News in English, 09-09-05

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From: The Athens News Agency at <http://www.ana.gr/>

CONTENTS

[01] Party reactions to PM's speech

[01] Party reactions to PM's speech

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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