Samaras in standby mode

After fruitless contacts with political leaders, ND president Antonis Samaras gave back the exploratory mandate to form a government.

Following the meetings with Alexis Tsipras, Evangelos Venizelos and Fotis Kouvelis, Antonis Samaras said that we cannot leave the country ungovernable and that's why he tried to set up a government of national salvation with staying in the euro and the renegotiation of the memorandum as prerequisites.

He said that SYRIZA president Alexis Tsipras rejected the proposal for cooperation and PASOK leader Evangelos Venizelos proposed a government of broader participation and with the cooperation of the Left.

He spoke with Aleka Papariga and decided there is no room for discussion as KKE rejects the EU. Kammenos also turned down any discussion. "We did everything we could and appealed to all political parties. We warned that the memoranda policy will fail because of the immense suffering it caused and this failure led to yesterday's result," Samaras said.

From now on Samaras will wait for the initiatives of the other two leaders who will get the mandate to form a government and the final initiative of the President of the Republic, who will try to reconcile the different positions of political parties.

To form a government there will have to be one more party apart from ND and PASOK, and all eyes are now on the Fotis Klis' Democratic Left, which has 19 seats and more conciliatory positions, and can meet certain conditions of the other two parties based on the country’s stay in the euro and the change of the memorandum.

A role will also be played by the moves of our European partners, and especially whether they will accept a loosening of the memorandum terms from a government they will consider reliable. But the question is whether Samaras will accept another prime minister who would lead such a government or will prefer to have re-elections.

Samaras is already creating a different political context and bringing back the "renegotiation" in his speech in case things go to re-elections. He says he was the first to talk about the renegotiation now accepted by others and that he had warned of the risk of an absence of government. But the record low that ND received in the elections brings strong dissatisfaction inside the party. This percentage is ascribed to Samaras by many sides and his circle of close associates who managed the party in recent years, and this tends to create an attitude within ND that the party should be involved in a coalition government even without Samaras as prime minister.

But it is unknown yet if ND, being the first party, would accept a prime minister from the Centre-Left such as Fotis Kouvelis. The two ND vice presidents, Dimitris Avramopoulos and Stavros Dimas, are mentioned as alternatives. Avramopoulos has cautiously fostered a consensus profile and Dimas is acceptable in areas other than ND and maintains good contacts with the European Union. Also, the case of Lucas Papademos has not been abandoned but has significantly dropped.