National Unity government to be formed in Greece / Greek General Elections

[Ephilant]

Our Deputy Minister for the Maritime affairs Giorgos Vernicos was simply a poor shipowner earning bucket loads of money from cruise liners registered to an off shore company on the Marshall Islands, listed as Vernicos Offshore Group S.A.. Not that he was secretive about things.
But, Article 6 of Law 3849/2010 is clear. It strictly forbids ministers and politicians in general to take part in off-shore companies. The law foresees heavy penalties and fines in case for any breach of the law.

Syriza pointed this one out, and the poor guy had to give up his little earner. They simply can't do anything anymore. I wonder if this law was really applied, how nay of our 300 deputies would remain a deputy? And I also wonder how much Samaras knew about all of this? He will now probably claim amnesia as well as poor eye sight...

[Ephilant]

Samaras does not just want his ministers and government members to belt up and stay out of the TV and radio studios unless they have his permission to go in and say what he tells them to say, he now also wants to keep his 1 eye on them. As of today, ministers and deputies will need his personal permission to leave Athens, irrespective of the reason for leaving.
So, no more week-ends on luxury yachts, no more frolicking around special beaches with special ladies, no more visiting of "friends and donors" etc.

when the PM says government members need to work seven days per week and be available 24 hours per day, he means it. The phenomenon that ministries remain 2-3 days without ‘head’ because ministers and deputies visit their home areas to attend weddings, baptizing ceremonies or keep contacts with the local community will be on hold.

It always was Samaras’ intention to separate the legislative and excecutive powers and to proceed to a substantial incompatibility between ministerial posts and parliament membership. This is the first step in that direction. Ultimately, ministers will not be able to keep their local offices and …clients.

Just hope he manages to enforce this and cut out the go-betweens as well.

[Ephilant]

Samaras is staying true to what has dogged him all his life, poor judgement!
First he lands himself in hospital, then his new, not yet sworn in finance minister throws a sicky and needs replacing.
Then Vernicos turns out to be the owner of an offshore company which is illegal for an elected parliamentarian in Greece, and carries a jail sentece of up to 5 years and a fine of up to 500K. It's a good thing for the former ministers that that law was actually never enforced. Vernicos simply stated he was unaware of this law, and that seems to be the end of it. He's not getting his 100K a year pocket money for his junior minister job though.
Now Avramopoulous is throwing a strop over the fact that HE is not allowed to attend the EU summit, but the President is going instead.
The decision not to replace Vernicos as deputy minister for Maritime affairs is also back firing. The question everybody asks now is why was it created in the first place if the guy is not going to be replaced?
And to cap it all, Venizelos, also known as God, has now decided to tell the nation that although PASOK supports this "government of responsibility" made up of "trustworthy people" (the deputy minister for maritime affairs was a PASOK appointee), PASOK can under no circumstances be identified with Nea Democratia, because it was ND who blindly led the country into the May 6th elections and caused the polarisation with SYRIZA? Would this be sour grapes because most of the vote increase for SYRIZA can
be matched vote for vote with a decrease for PASOK?

Fun and games already, and parliament has not yet assembled for 1 day. We are however in an emergency situation that requires everybody to pull together and....

[Ephilant]

And the madness continues...
while people are rumaging through waste bins to find food, our new "Government of Responsibility", full of "trustworhty people" has committed it's first act of treason.

Today, the ND/PASOK/DemLeft coalition decided to spend 50 million € of the budget on.....
political parties.
This is a leftover of the PASOK/ND dominated times when they divided this up between themselves, and it was obviously insisted upon again by one or two of the "trustworthy people". So, today they decided that each party that got more than 1.5% of the vote will get some of the pot, shared out as follows:

ND 15.4 million
SYRIZA: 14.1 million
PASOK 7.5 million
Independent Greeks : 4 million
Chrysi Avgi: 3.9 million
DemLeft: 3.4 million
KKE: 3.95 million
Drasi/Dimiourgia Xana get 750.000, despite not making it into parliament...

I sincerely hope that the EU summit uses the occasion to tell these clowns that this needs to be reversed and the money needs to be used elsewhere, or else... this is just outrageous.
SYRIZA and KKE have already said their slice will be used to support the least well of in the cities/ Chrysi Avgi will probably be in the market for the landmines they want to put at the Turkish border to stop illegal immigrants...

[Ephilant]

And another one bites the dust...
this time Yiannis Koukiadis, head of the Privatization Fund, the group set up to sell the nations assets, resigned. He had already put all sales on hold while we had or interim government, but had also on many occasions voiced his misgivings about the programme, and especially the proposed selling of harbours, airports etc.
The new "Government of Responsibility" doesn't see anything wrong with selling the crown jewels, and ordered him to go ahead with the sales. Today, he claims "health and personal reasons" as the cause of his sudden resignation.
Meanwhile, Rapanos, the finance minister who never was, today also resigned as head of the National Bank of Greece. I'm beginning to think the guy is genuinely sick as a parrot after glimsing the real extend of the problems this country is facing.

[C. Flower]

And another one bites the dust...
this time Yiannis Koukiadis, head of the Privatization Fund, the group set up to sell the nations assets, resigned. He had already put all sales on hold while we had or interim government, but had also on many occasions voiced his misgivings about the programme, and especially the proposed selling of harbours, airports etc.
The new "Government of Responsibility" doesn't see anything wrong with selling the crown jewels, and ordered him to go ahead with the sales. Today, he claims "health and personal reasons" as the cause of his sudden resignation.
Meanwhile, Rapanos, the finance minister who never was, today also resigned as head of the National Bank of Greece. I'm beginning to think the guy is genuinely sick as a parrot after glimsing the real extend of the problems this country is facing.

Well done, to the man who resigned.

[fluffybiscuits]

And another one bites the dust...
this time Yiannis Koukiadis, head of the Privatization Fund, the group set up to sell the nations assets, resigned. He had already put all sales on hold while we had or interim government, but had also on many occasions voiced his misgivings about the programme, and especially the proposed selling of harbours, airports etc.
The new "Government of Responsibility" doesn't see anything wrong with selling the crown jewels, and ordered him to go ahead with the sales. Today, he claims "health and personal reasons" as the cause of his sudden resignation.
Meanwhile, Rapanos, the finance minister who never was, today also resigned as head of the National Bank of Greece. I'm beginning to think the guy is genuinely sick as a parrot after glimsing the real extend of the problems this country is facing.

Invariably this could be a tell tale sign of things being very bad and not being mentioned to the media. Stress triggers all sorts of conditions and is often an indicator as to how bad things are (health and safety is my speciality!) so perhaps this is an indirect sign that once he learnt how bad things are that its going to be a rocky road. A privatisation drive is going to do long term damage in the long run because in years to come they may want to buy back the companies but at hugely inflated prices. Look at the damage that Tatcher era policies did during the 80's when she privatised the railways and what a mess they became. Thanks for the updates Eliphant, as always, very welcome

[Ephilant]

Samaras had his letter delivered to the EU today. Although not made public, it is known that he did NOT (as promised in his election campaign) ask, leave alone demand, and changes to the MoU, but simply points out that things are not that good in Greece and if they might want to consider a few changes please...
It is now also reported that he will not be able to travel for another 40 days, meaning that he will miss the next summit during which Greece will be discussed, and he will be pulled up on the non-delivery of the personally guaranteed measures in the MoU, including the removal of 150,000 civil servants which was somehow interpreted as lets take on another 82,000....

Wasn't there another wise man at some stage who spend 40 days or so in the dessert and then became enlightened? We were always led to believe that was Venizelos. Looks like Samaras is catching up here....

[Ephilant]

More fun and games with our "Government of Responsibility". Our 300 parliamentarians were sworn in yesterday, with difficulty. Neither Samaras nor Venizelos were present for the ceremony. All SYRIZA and KKE elected members refused to take the religious oat, putting down a marker as to their intentions for removal of the Church from politics once the occasion arises. 3 Muslim MPs insisted on taking the oath on the Quran, which surprisingly enough was not a problem but accommodated immediately.
Our parliament has 7 vice presidents, 3 of which are proposed by the largest party, and then 1 each for the next 4 parites. And here the fun starts. The proposed vice presidents have t have their position confirmed by parliamentarian vote, and one of them is a Chrysi Avgi MP. All non-Chrysi Avgi MP refused to vote in favour, leaving the position unfilled. there is no provision for when a gentlemen's agreement suddenly isn't honoured by the gentlemen involved. We might end up with only 6 vice presidents, which might cause legal problems. If the Chrysi Avgi member does get the 75 votes needed to take up the 7th post, there will be other trouble, guaranteed.
But Samaras has bigger problems. He is under house arrest from his doctors, who are adament that he is not, under any circumstances to go anywhere, by any means, and he is not strain his eyes in any way.
Under our constitution, Samaras now has 15 days to put his government to the parliament and have it confirmed by a vote of confidence. Samaras must also, in person, read out his entire program for government, in detail. Doc says "Nein"...

[fluffybiscuits]

More fun and games with our "Government of Responsibility". Our 300 parliamentarians were sworn in yesterday, with difficulty. Neither Samaras nor Venizelos were present for the ceremony. All SYRIZA and KKE elected members refused to take the religious oat, putting down a marker as to their intentions for removal of the Church from politics once the occasion arises. 3 Muslim MPs insisted on taking the oath on the Quran, which surprisingly enough was not a problem but accommodated immediately.
Our parliament has 7 vice presidents, 3 of which are proposed by the largest party, and then 1 each for the next 4 parites. And here the fun starts. The proposed vice presidents have t have their position confirmed by parliamentarian vote, and one of them is a Chrysi Avgi MP. All non-Chrysi Avgi MP refused to vote in favour, leaving the position unfilled. there is no provision for when a gentlemen's agreement suddenly isn't honoured by the gentlemen involved. We might end up with only 6 vice presidents, which might cause legal problems. If the Chrysi Avgi member does get the 75 votes needed to take up the 7th post, there will be other trouble, guaranteed.
But Samaras has bigger problems. He is under house arrest from his doctors, who are adament that he is not, under any circumstances to go anywhere, by any means, and he is not strain his eyes in any way.
Under our constitution, Samaras now has 15 days to put his government to the parliament and have it confirmed by a vote of confidence. Samaras must also, in person, read out his entire program for government, in detail. Doc says "Nein"...

Is he going to survive a vote of confidence? All the infighting and the disagreements may very well go against him and therefore cause the new govt to collapse. There may be trouble ahead....

[Ephilant]

There may be trouble ahead....

What do you mean "may"? He'll survive the vote alright, if he finds his way to Parliament and does the intros and all that. And the **** will start hitting the fan big time. There will be many sick notes... We'll be voting again just after Xmas, they won't forego their 500€ Xmas bonus, that you can also bet on.
Meanwhile, Loukanikos is out and about again, and even has a pub named after him. In Madrid mind you, but that's just to highlight the international character of the trouble ahead. When Loukanikos is out, trouble is never too far away...

[Ephilant]

Sometimes things do change, even in Greece.
In May last it was revealed that some 800 ex parliamentarians in Greece had banded together and started a law suit against the state for a retrospective increase in pensions backdated to 2003. The total sum demanded amounted to no less than 530 million €.
This law suit was started against the backdrop of dire poverty, falling wages and rising unemployment in the country. When it became public knowledge, there was obvious outrage. Today, The Court of Audit which heard the case told the boys where to go, and about time to. It also emerged that, just in case this crazy country would have allowed the claim, the minister for Finance had a law ready and waiting to prevent these clowns from ever collecting the money. And the vast majority of the new parliament had committed in supporting the law. Probably out of sheer embaressment, but at least, it is not going to happen. Not for these guys anyway. Today it emerged that about 240 more ex parliamentarians have a seperate claim for roughly 300,000€ each in with the same court. Their spokesperson says they are now not hopeful of receiving what is "rightfully theirs"...

[Ephilant]

And another one bites the dust...
This time the Junior Minister for Labour, Nikos Nikolopoulos, handed in his resignation because he could not agree with the new government policy of not even trying to renegotiate with the Troika on the required wages and pensions reforms. The stumbling block here is the insistance of the Troika that the government must implement another 10% horizontal cut to the minimum wage and pensions in order to "save" 200 million € by September.
Says Nikos Nikolopoulos:

”The sole reason of my resignation is my personal conviction that the issue of renegotiating with the troika, as well as the correction of significant distortions in labour, pension, social security and welfare issues, should have been emphatically put on the table from the start.”

What is of significant is that this is an ND trustee of Samaras himself and not one of the "trustworthy persons" appointed by PASOK or DEM LEFT. What is even more significant is that the ex junior minister represents the Peleponneses area, which has always been very conservative and therefore stauch ND supporters. IT indicates that Samaras is losing the support of his strongest Allies, and if this trend continues, he will not last long. Early forecasts say end of September and Greece will be heading for the ballot box again.

[Ephilant]

Meanwhile, a war which has been brewing between the medical profession and the government has now erupted, and the patient is as usual once again the ultimate victim in this.
Last year the health insurance companies heralded the mother of all revolutions in health care, a software package to produce electronic prescriptions. A bit like the debacle in the Irish health system a few years ago, but for pills instead of wages. The idea behind the system was for doctors to use the system to write the prescription, which would then automatically and immediately be picked up by the system in the pharmacy, and the prescription would be ready and waiting by the time the patient arrived in the pharmacy. The electronic prescription would also immediately take care of payments from the health insurers to the pharmacies etc. And that's were snag nr 1 is. The health insurers and social funds were raided to pay the banks, so there is no money, and pharmacies didn't get paid.
The second snag was that the ministry wanted its investment in this software back as soon as possible and ordered the doctors to purchase a computer, pre-loaded with the system from them, at a ridiculous price. So the doctors said "Nein", and kept on writing manual prescriptions.
The government, in all it's wisdom decided to tackle this, and pushed through a fine for manual prescriptions to be paid by the doctors, thinking this would force them to spend a fortune on one of these marvelous computers. So the doctors stopped writing, and stopped prescribing completely.
Today it also emerged that the package doesn't actually work properly, because not all medicines are in the database yet, and certain prescriptions for amongst others cancer patients still needed to be hand written, for which the doctor then gets fined...
It also emerged that the computer system is designed to pass all the info from both doctor AND patient as well as pharmacist on to the revenue....
So no pills are being prescribed in Greece. We might actually end up with a healthy population if this keeps going for a while. And knowing Greek history on non-cooperation with government schemes to calculate real income and therefore taxes, this can go on for years!

[fluffybiscuits]

Meanwhile, a war which has been brewing between the medical profession and the government has now erupted, and the patient is as usual once again the ultimate victim in this.
Last year the health insurance companies heralded the mother of all revolutions in health care, a software package to produce electronic prescriptions. A bit like the debacle in the Irish health system a few years ago, but for pills instead of wages. The idea behind the system was for doctors to use the system to write the prescription, which would then automatically and immediately be picked up by the system in the pharmacy, and the prescription would be ready and waiting by the time the patient arrived in the pharmacy. The electronic prescription would also immediately take care of payments from the health insurers to the pharmacies etc. And that's were snag nr 1 is. The health insurers and social funds were raided to pay the banks, so there is no money, and pharmacies didn't get paid.
The second snag was that the ministry wanted its investment in this software back as soon as possible and ordered the doctors to purchase a computer, pre-loaded with the system from them, at a ridiculous price. So the doctors said "Nein", and kept on writing manual prescriptions.
The government, in all it's wisdom decided to tackle this, and pushed through a fine for manual prescriptions to be paid by the doctors, thinking this would force them to spend a fortune on one of these marvelous computers. So the doctors stopped writing, and stopped prescribing completely.
Today it also emerged that the package doesn't actually work properly, because not all medicines are in the database yet, and certain prescriptions for amongst others cancer patients still needed to be hand written, for which the doctor then gets fined...
It also emerged that the computer system is designed to pass all the info from both doctor AND patient as well as pharmacist on to the revenue....
So no pills are being prescribed in Greece. We might actually end up with a healthy population if this keeps going for a while. And knowing Greek history on non-cooperation with government schemes to calculate real income and therefore taxes, this can go on for years!

How governmental bad planning can end up ******** everyone. Its very much reminiscent of the E Voting machines, will they end up now with loads of spare computers that are , just well, completely useless? Add to the that there is also the question of whether there is any laws being broken in relation to data protection, are the patients aware that their details are going to the revenue? Poor planned out and obviously rushed out for some ridiculous reason...