The former prime minister and current MP of PASOK-Movement of Change, Giorgos Papandreou, spoke in the followingnoon at the conference of the newspaper “Kathimerini” on the topic “Transformation: 50 years later”, where he argued that the main strategic choice of the PASOK government in 2010 was to accept the memorandum to deal with the looming bankruptcy of the country, was correct, despite the mistakes made. “Besides, subsequent governments followed it”, he emphasized.
On the announcement of the referendum in 2011, the former prime minister said: “It was wrong that I did not insist on the referendum. We bore the heavy burden of responsibility and that’s when I experienced populism. Others said to tear up the memoranda. We told the truths. If we had served them, the memoranda would have been of much shorter duration”, said Mr. Papandreou.
He recalled that in the pre-election debate of the 2009 elections, he had asked Karamanlis to tell the real facts regarding the economy and he received no answer. He even revealed that following he had left the prime ministership and was lecturing at US universities, he met the person responsible for Greece at the IMF, of Indian origin, who told him that they had pointed out in 2007-8 to Mr. Alogoskoufis and the ND government that the country would go bankrupt and they had to take measures. “Mr. Alogoskoufis knew what was happening. And of course Mr. Papathanasiou. I was informed by Mr. Provopoulos ten days before the elections, that ‘we are not doing well'”.
When asked by SKAI journalist, Sias Kosioni, if the populism served by the PASOK governments in the 1980s cost money, Mr. Papandreou replied that “PASOK was not a populist party. It was a popular party.”
According to the former prime minister, populism was “what I experienced in 2009, when in the most difficult moment of the recent history of the Post-colonialism, where there had to be a spirit of unity – with any differences – everyone said ‘we will go to Zappeio, we will change the things, we will expel the troika, we will tear up the memorandums’. This was populism. We served the opposite. We told the truths and the truths hurt. If we had served them, the memoranda would have been much shorter.”
Giorgos Papandreou also referred to the phone call he made as Prime Minister in July 2011 to Antonis Samaras, in which, as he claimed, he told him that “I was willing, even though I had won 44% and had a majority in the Parliament, to leave the this chair” under the condition “that there be unity and that we work together to get out of this situation”.
Ten minutes following the end of the phone call – said G. Papandreou – his colleagues informed him that “the place is buzzing that you are resigning, that you are leaving. We had not made an agreement and in ten minutes he comes out and says ‘Papandreou is leaving, we are coming’. It is in this spirit that I said there can be no agreement.”
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