By Liz Alderman, The New York Times
ATHENS — It seemed almost too good to be true: For months, relative stability had returned to Greece, and fears that the country would exit the euro had faded like a bad dream. But a political firestorm that ignited here last week after Prime Minister Antonis Samaras dared to fire a swath of once-untouchable civil servants may threaten to undo all that.
On Monday, Greece faced the most serious political crisis since Mr. Samaras took power exactly a year ago. After issuing an order last week to immediately close the state-run Hellenic Broadcasting Corp. — setting off a wave of protests and sympathy strikes — his government coalition narrowly avoided unraveling, at least for now.
Whether or not that happens — and Mr. Samaras may yet find a resolution with his governing partners and skirt the temptation to call an early election — the latest drama underscores how instability continues to plague the government despite a growing narrative among European leaders and in financial markets that Greece is turning a corner.
On Monday night Mr. Samaras was forced to face down the members of his fragile coalition, who were seeking to reverse a decision that some of them have called an authoritarian maneuver designed to keep Greece in the good graces of its much-despised creditors.
As the government met behind closed doors, one of Greece’s highest courts ruled that Mr. Samaras acted legally in ordering the dismantling of the state broadcaster, ERT, a move aimed at cutting some of the thousands of civil service job cuts demanded by Greece’s creditors. But judges decided that it was illegal for ERT to be taken off the airwaves.
The decision bought Mr. Samaras some breathing room: His junior coalition partners, the Socialist Pasok party and the Democratic Left, said after the meeting that they would meet again on Wednesday to discuss how to get a temporary version of ERT back on the air until a new, slimmed-down operation is re-opened in the coming months. That was an indication that although the coalition had not collapsed, it was struggling to hammer out a compromise.
“The discussion was about ERT,” the Pasok leader, Evangelos Venizelos, said. “But the key issue is the government to operate as a real coalition government not with New Democracy simply tolerating its partners,” he added, referring to Mr. Samaras’ dominant, conservative party.
Meanwhile, the maverick politician Alexis Tsipras, leader of the opposition Syriza party, held a large rally, attracting thousands in Syntagma square, near where the government met, to denounce what he called Mr. Samaras’ “despotic politics.”
Simon Tilford, chief economist at the Center for European Reform in London. said, “The idea that Greece is somehow out of the woods seems complacent,” adding, “It reflects a readiness to ignore the large-scale political challenges facing Greece.”
Those challenges are what Mr. Samaras appears to be trying to tame. With his set jaw, dark-hued suits and ties, and an apparent willingness to force unpalatable changes to the Greek state, he has made it his mission to restore Greece’s image on the international stage. Finance Minister Yannis Stournaras, who attended the talks on Monday, indicated as much. “The big issue for the government is for radical reforms to continue,” he said.
Since gaining power, Mr. Samaras has won the sympathies, if not the outright backing, of Europe’s ruling class, including Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, who telephoned him on Sunday to urge him to stay the course.
But Mr. Samaras’s approach is increasingly stoking ire among politicians in his governing coalition, Greece’s raucous unions, as well as average Greeks, who see Mr. Samaras as operating in an increasingly unilateral manner.
In the last several months, he has stepped up his use of emergency decrees and edicts to impose changes that other political parties and Greece’s raucous unions have a long history of trying to thwart. Last month, he issued an emergency edict to force schoolteachers on the verge of striking during exams to return to work. Earlier, he used the same tactic to stop strike action by seamen and subway workers. He also introduced emergency decrees imposing stricter supervision on ministries and state bodies and bringing the pensions of Parliament staff into line with those of less privileged employees in the civil service.
But by pulling the plug on the state broadcaster, ERT, and forcing the first real job cuts to Greece’s bloated civil service since the country was forced to take an international bailout more than three years ago, Mr. Samaras appears to be engaging in a high-stakes game of chess.
To his detractors, it was a step toward quasi-authoritarian action, since he bypassed any consensus decision from his coalition partners as well as a Parliamentary vote. Many Greeks feel little sympathy for the agency, which has a reputation in Greece for being stacked with political appointees who reel in salaries well above the incomes of most Greeks, while working fewer hours. Yet they felt concerned about whether Mr. Samaras was skirting democracy by unilaterally ordering the shutdown.
But since many Greeks appeared to have little love for employees of ERT, their concerns were not enough to push them into a new wave of mass protests. “Everyone knows they were living on our tax money and many people got jobs through political favors,” said Kostas, a former hardware merchant whose store went bankrupt in the crisis and now drives a taxi 12 hours a day to make ends meet. “It’s better to close it down than to force the rest of us to take more cuts to our salaries and pensions.”
As Mr. Samaras prepared to meet with his governing coalition Monday night, he said he did not want to force the country toward new elections, which could renew questions about Greece’s stability, at least in the short term.
On Monday, a day after Mrs. Merkel phoned Mr. Samaras to encourage him to press ahead following the upset over ERT, Wolfgang Schäuble, the German finance minister who not so long ago chastised Greece for threatening to bring down the whole euro zone, said he would travel to Greece soon to encourage continued stability.
“Merkel’s motivation is clear: She’s desperately trying to head off any problems in the head-up to the German elections,” Mr. Tilford said.
But if Mr. Samaras does decide eventually to force new elections, analysts said, it would mainly be because he sees an opening to consolidate his power in order to push through more reforms and face down Greece’s increasingly weak unions, which he has managed to catch off guard through his use of emergency edicts.
“People see that we are in a pivotal moment,” Harry Papasotiriou, the director of the Institute of International Relations at Panteion University in Athens said. “If the process of reforming Greece gets stalled because of political fighting, more austerity must be pushed on a society that can no longer take it,” he said. “So he needs to try to have an election that will realign his power.”
Mr. Samaras’s increasingly unilateral action, he said, was aimed at thwarting public sector unions that are weakened but still have the power to engage in strikes that Mr. Samaras sees as further crippling an already hobbled economy. “He takes them by surprise so that they don’t have time to engage in mass mobilization,” Mr. Papasotiriou said.
Earlier this year, an official close to Mr. Samaras, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Mr. Samaras was trying to demonstrate that the government will be willing to move forcefully against other groups — including militant trade unions that might stand in the way of his efforts to carry out painful economic reforms.
“We want to present ourselves as successful, to start legitimizing Greece again in the eyes of the international community,” the official said. “How can we impose new laws, or move ahead with reforms, when laws are being broken? It is time to get our house in order.”
Niki Kitsantonis contributed reporting.
Related Articles
UPDATE 4-Greek court orders state TV reopened, compromise nears
