The leftist Greek government on Monday used a more-or-less expected decision by the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) over short-term debt relief measures for Greece to criticize the main opposition party and its leader.
A statement released by Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’ office mentioned rival ND president Kyriakos Mitsotakis by name, charging that the latter’s “danger-mongering” was disproved by the ESM decision.
European creditors last month approved short-term debt relief measures for Greece at the Eurogroup setting, a prospect that almost didn’t materialize this month after an abrupt 617-million-euro “holiday bonus” was subsequently granted to 1.6 million pensioners in the country. A Christmas Eve letter to the Eurogroup chairman by Greece’s FinMin promising not to proceed with a similar spending measure without prior consultation eventually freed up the debt relief measures.
In praising Monday’s development, the Syriza-dominated government, which is consistently trailing ND by double-digit margins in all mainstream opinion polls over the last six months, again referred to the benefit of a 20-percentage point reduction in Greece’s debt-to-GDP index over a timespan extending to far off 2060.
“Mr. Mitsotakis, who one month ago refused to back the benefit to 1.6 million low-income pensioners via the one-off ’13th pension’ after (negative) reactions by the most extreme quarters among creditors, and even though he initially and officially said he’d vote in favor, is now gravely exposed,” a statement circulated by Tsipras’ office noted.
The “Yuletide bonus” was allocated from a preliminary primary budget surplus recorded for 2016, essentially the product of an unprecedented “tax tsunami” that was applied to taxpayers and consumers in Greece. Anyone receiving less than 850 euros a month in social security benefits, regardless of assets of any type, was granted a bonus, which differed based on the height of an individual beneficiary’s monthly benefits.
