"The condemnation of the Memorandum would be catastrophic and lead to a dead-end"

During an inter-channel interview on the new election period, party president Evangelos Venizelos set the real dilemma of the elections of June 17th and emphasized the need to vote for PASOK.

For Mr. Venizelos the dilemma is not drachma or euro, since the Greek people have answered this overwhelmingly in favor of staying in the Eurozone, but if our country should go down the blind and destructive road of canceling the memorandum, it would be better off to try an organized program revision instead.

The first path will make the country Europe’s scapegoat and strengthen the party of the drachma, endanger deposits, swell unemployment and devalue the property of Greeks, unlike organized and responsible negotiation, whereby we can achieve an extension of the program for two or three years to implement the six points put on the international discussion table by PASOK.

Venizelos said that this revision is now possible both because correlations are changing in Europe and because the country is in a more advantageous position after the debt reduction. This organized review cannot be pulled off by ND, stated Mr. Venizelos, targeting Antonis Samaras.

That’s why ND, he stressed, belongs to conservative and right-wing forces in Europe. Only socialists can pull this off, he added. He characterized ND’s stance as contradictory and inconsistent and then accused it of maintaining the illusion of autonomy, speaking in terms of the past.

He attacked the horizontal, as he said, party of the drachma, stating that behind the political parties there are speculative forces that want to return it to the national currency. Mr. Venizelos blamed the new political setting that was set up, speaking of a bipolar caricature and false polarization.

“The new system is multipolar”, he noted Attacking the two top parties of May 6th, he blamed ND for having “an old right-wing, anti-communist approach” and SYRIZA for “promising for tomorrow but being a bad copy of yesterday’s negative aspects, which had also characterized PASOK’s behavior in the past”.

Referring to the political debate he stated that because the new political field is multipolar, there is no issue of a televised debate between the two, between Samaras and Tsipras. He focused, thus, on a talk between all leaders, like the meeting at the presidential palace.

For the government of the day after the elections, Mr. Venizelos was of the view that it must have a center-left basis, meaning PASOK and the responsible forces like it, pointing in that way to the Democratic Left. He clarified that PASOK is no one’s “Addition” and that it has no stringent fascination with ministerial posts, and sent a message that on June 18th no known central party member will be in a ministerial position. “PASOK can survive outside the government”, he stated.

He marked the establishment of bonding fronts among center-right forces as artificial. For the new deviations from the program, with the loss of revenue and increase of spending, he blamed the lack of governance, which among other things has negative effects on tourism and the operation of tax administration and state administration.

He indirectly attacked Alexis Tsipras’ behavior abroad, stating that foreign politics is no game for internal audiences.

Mr. Venizelos stated that IMF chief Christine Lagarde’s style is unacceptable and offensive, and the statements of Charles Dalara on the need to recapitalize the ECB if the country is pushed out of the euro only serve the interests of bankers.