By February the government needs to find a supermajority of 180 MPs in parliament (it currently controls 155) to elect a new President of the Republic or snap elections will be triggered.
The prospect of general elections forms a destabilizing backdrop to the difficult ongoing negotiations with Greece’s troika of lenders over the final review of Greece’s bailout programme.
These negotiations have been mishandled by Antonis Samaras’s government who seemingly jumped the gun in September by announcing the end of the Memorandum and the departure of the IMF from Greece long before either had been secured, hoping that wishful thinking would become reality, if repeated often enough. All it did was cause Greek borrowing costs to sky-rocket.
Meanwhile SYRIZA has become so excited by its poll numbers that party officials have come to believe their own press, thinking that all Greece needs to do is hold elections as soon as possible – regardless of the cost – and a new era will sweep through, not only Greece, but all of Europe.
As these various dramas reverberate through panel news programs and across the internet, the former Prime Minister George Papandreou decided that now would be a good time to trigger an existential crisis within his party, the junior coalition partner PASOK, by crossing the Rubicon in his rift with the deputy prime minister. This has left PASOK voters (the few remaining) with the unpalatable dilemma of supporting either the PASOK leader currently implementing the Memorandum Agreement, or the former PASOK leader who first signed the Memorandum Agreement.
The above chaos arises from the doings of the more ‘responsible’ parliamentary parties. Will Greece elect a new head of state in a few months or will we have general elections? For less than noble reasons, the waters are distinctly turbulent.
The Bribery Conspiracy
Now amid all of the boat-rocking and self-inflicted wounds, the right wing ‘Independent Greeks’ Party has recently decided to get in on the action and host a circus of its own.
A furore broke out several weeks ago over allegations in the press that unnamed ‘businessmen’ were seeking to bribe independent MPs or MPs from other parties to support to government’s candidate for President of the Republic.
An investigation was launched but prosecutors, after interviewing several MPs, found no evidence of such a plot.
Now the Independent Greek MP, Stavroula Xoulidou, effectively reopened the case when she appeared on a TV panel show and alleged that she was offered a bribe of 3 million euros over the phone and via Facebook regarding the presidential election.
Speaking on Blue Sky TV she said that, a New Democracy official "proposed a financial amount to vote for the President of the Republic,” adding that in a telephone conversation he had made a proposal that would ‘solve her financial problem’.
“The man in question characteristically told me that the amounts for these situations reach 2 and 3 million,” she said.
Not content with those hand grenades, Ms Xoulidou added the man had told her that one Independent Greek MP, Panagiotis Melas had been bribed, and that is why he had rebelled against the party line of opposing the election of a new president. She stated that she had evidence to back up her claims.
A short while later a furious Melas called the program and said on air, “These obscenities, these lies, this malcontent. I say to Ms Xoulidou, either she will give me the name of the person so I can sue him, or I will sue her.”
Here Ms Xoulidou demurred at offering the name on air. While effectively alleging that an elected MP has been bribed on national television is apparently acceptable to Ms Xoulidou, identifying the source of her claims is not.
Ms Xoulidou’s claims were subsequently backed up by the Independent Greeks leader (and established conspiracy aficionado), Panos Kammenos.
“Ms Xoulidou has warned me for a while now that there was such an offer,” he said on the same program. “I told her to accept the proposal so we can back up what is happening, that is that there are some who offer money for people to defect from the Independent Greeks. Indeed we made all of the efforts to arrange a meeting at Ms Xoulidou’s office. The particular gentleman postponed the appointment twice. We had of course notified the anti-extortion department of the police in order for the required evidence to be obtained.”
Xoulidou’s allegations understandably triggered a firestorm. And she was subsequently called before the prosecutor to testify about her claims. Which subsequently seemingly unraveled.
The man who supposedly offered a bribe to Ms Xoulidou was revealed to be Giorgos Soukouras. Far from a wealthy businessman or New Democracy official, Mr Soukouras is an author of historical books who says that he has no connection with the party. Speaking on a host of TV interviews Mr Soukouras maintains that he receives no pension and is uninsured saying, “If I had money from New Democracy would I give it to Ms Xoulidou? I don’t have a penny in my pocket.”
The ‘damning evidence’ about the offering of the bribe and the allegation that Melas had already been bribed appears to boil down to a private exchange of Facebook messages that reads as follows:
First Message: “One opportunity comes along in life”
Second Message: “See what I was telling you? Someone else got there.”
Third message: “1-0 Melas is on the take. Remember what I was telling you?”
While Mr Soukouras admitted that he had spoken with Xoulidou and had visited the offices of several others in government he said, “I have no connection with New Democracy. As a member of the committee of pensioners of Northern Epirus, we spoke about pensions at the office of the Agricultural Pensions Organization (OGA).” Soukouras claims that he also visited other MP’s offices including Ms Xoulidou's to discuss the pensions of residents of Northern Epirus.
“When I was talking with Ms Xoulidou, we had conversed and said that the EU will not allow elections to happen in Greece because they will approach in various ways MPs to vote for the President of the Republic. When Melas voted against [the party] I told her ‘see what I said’.”
Soukouras also repeatedly publicly apologized to Pavlos Melas saying that he had made an error in implying that the MP had taken a bribe. Speaking to Vima FM, he said that Melas had since accepted the apology.
The police department of cybercrime is now involved, investigating the digital trail of messages to ascertain if there is any wrongdoing. The prosecutor is also requested a warrant to investigate Xoulidou’s phone and internet records.
While there remains the possibility that there was indeed a nefarious ring set up to bribe MPs to vote for a new head of state (and one that inexplicably used Facebook to conduct its shady business), there is also the distinct possibility that the whole case is a farce, with the leadership of the Independent Greeks mistaking hearsay as damning evidence of an intricate plot against them. And then spinning it into a public fiasco, which only lends weight to foreign whispers that perhaps the Greek political class is less than serious.
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