ATHENS – Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’ broken-promise deal with Greece’s international lenders for a third bailout, this one for 86 billion euros ($100.93 billion) that he said is bringing a recovery, and an array of handouts hasn’t helped restore his status with voters.
Tsipras and his Radical Left SYRIZA, which reneged on vows to reverse big pay cuts, tax hikes, slashed pensions and worker firings, are still 12 points behind the major rival New Democracy Conservatives it replaced, gaining only 1 percent from a previous survey.
That was the finding in a poll taken by the Thessaloniki-based University of Macedonia’s political studies department (PAMAK) which gave New Democracy a 30.5-18-5 percent lead for the fading leftists.
The results were given during an evening newscast on Athens-based SKAI TV, continuing the torrent of trouble for Tsipras who promised a leftist revolution would spread throughout Europe before he surrendered to the Troika of the European Union-European Central Bank-European Stability Mechanism (EU-ECB-ESM) putting up the rescue package.
A surprise showing was the gentle rebound of the former PASOK, now in a coalition called Democratic Alignment, that came in third with 8.5 percent, overtaking the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn at 7 percent, which had been third in virtually every survey even though all its 16 Members of Parliaments and dozens of members have been on trial for more than two years on charges of running a criminal gang, which they deny.
Democratic Alignment is still essentially irrelevant however even though it gained a boost by bringing in the Democratic Left, which is not in the Parliament and the To Potami centrists, who have only six seats in the 300-member body.
The Communist Party (KKE) was the only other political formation receiving more than 3 percent, the threshold needed to enter Parliament in the next elections, which means the Union of Centrists and SYRIZA’s junior partner, the Independent Greeks (ANEL) would be out of power.
In more bad news for Tsipras, 86 percent of those surveyed believed a holiday bonus he’s handing out to lower-income pensioners – whose benefits he’s cut far more than the gift they’re getting – was provided by severe over-taxation of the middle class, which Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos demanded and tried to defend as necessary.
The poll results came out a few hours after PASOK leader Fofi Gennimata won Sunday’s runoff elections for the leadership of a new center-left party that has yet to be named.
The same poll found that 86 percent of respondents believe the social dividend pledged by the government to Greeks on low incomes, and voted through Parliament on Monday, was the result of excessive increases to income tax.
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Source: thenationalherald.com
