Athens News Agency: News in English, 10-05-16

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

CONTENTS

[01] PM: Banks under scrutiny for Greek crisis

[02] KKE rally in central Athens

[03] Tsipras urges unity in Left

[01] PM: Banks under scrutiny for Greek crisis

Speaking on the programme "Fareed Zakaria GPS", the Greek prime minister stressed: "We are right now having a parliamentary investigation in Greece, which will look into the past and see how things went the wrong direction and what kinds of practices were negative practices. There are similar investigations going on in other countries and in the United States. This is where I ... hear the words fraud and lack of transparency. So yes, yes, there is great responsibility here."

Nevertheless, he warned that the Greek government will first let the due process proceed and investigation results to be presented before making judgments.

Asked about austerity measures, Papandreou reminded that the budget deficit has been cut by 40 percent compared to last year.

"So that's beyond our target, 10 percent up in revenues from VAT, and I think this determination is not just mine, it's not just my government's determination; it's the Greek people's determination to turn things around, to make big structural changes," he said, noting that opinion show unhappiness, but at the same time majority support for the measures.

Moreover, queried over German reluctance in the beginning to sign-off on a eurozone-IMF support mechanism -- which later concluded at a whopping 110 billion euros -- he emphasised that the money is not free, "this is a loan. So there is a wrong picture sometimes, which is saying we're handing out money to Greece. That's not so. We're paying back the loans we're getting."

[02] KKE rally in central Athens

Papariga reiterated her party's scathing attacks against the government, other parties on the left and right and against what she called the bougeousie classes and political establishment.

She referred to "barbarian" austerity taken by government, while charging that an effort is underway to "criminalise" communist ideology in the country with the pseudo-dilemma, as she said, of "do you respect and obey the constitution, yes or no?"

[03] Tsipras urges unity in Left

He noted that "sooner or later, Perissos [where KKE headquarters are based] will follow the road of unity in the face of the situation that is emerging".

Tsipras also defended his decision not to attend a meeting of the political party leaders under the president, saying his "conscience was clear" and that those responsible for the current situation were known.

"The Left finally, as a whole, did not trap itself into a meeting of prefabricated and false consensus with a policy of insanity. It was a historic decision of the Left to refuse to accept part of the responsibility, which does not in any case belong to it, for non-reversible destruction," he said.

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