Nea Dimokratia's New Year Resolutions

Mr. Samaras is getting organized for a full-blast renewal of Nea Dimokratia and a more forceful agenda against the government’s economic measures.

 Mr. Samaras is planning a change in faces as well as tactics and according to inside information, he is in a hurry to make all the changes before the New Year. The new tendency in ND will place emphasis on the far right “patriot” character of the party, focusing on members that are representative of such a profile.

For the coming week, however, Mr. Samaras is focusing on the reactions his party will have as to the annual budget that is going to be announced in Parliament. ND is already characterizing the budget as “non-realistic and too optimistic”, and will analyze the relevant argument through four main points.

Primarily, Mr. Papakostantinou will receive extreme criticism for not fulfilling all his promises, and for twisting the truth before the elections of ’09. Secondly, ND will be attacking the way the 2010 budget was executed and the legislation and measures that were supposed to be enforced but never were. The third point, the main one, will be the criticism against the 2011 budget and the main issue will be new measures the government will take that are essentially outside the framework of IMF instructions.

ND claims that “There is a prediction of 8 billion euros from the IMF instructions and an extra 6 billion euros the government is trying to amass in order to decrease the defecit, but 9 billion euros will be lost due to the economic crisis, unemployment benefits and interest rates. The country’s debt will be around 60 billion euros in 2 years, while all the time they have been accusing ND of creating an 80-billion-euro debt in five years.”

 The fourth point of ND's argument will be a retrospective of their actions for the year that is about to expire, stressing that they were supportive of legislation and measures the government passed, which they considered to be helpful for the people of Greece, and that they have supplied full and mature economic proposals about exiting the crisis.

ND is dividing its stance on the government’s politics into two key aspects: the IMF memorandum policies, which ND is totally against and the reform measures and legislation that ND supports so much that it is willing to discuss constitutional changes in order for the reforms to succeed.

Politically, ND is trying to benefit from showing a face of support for the government whilst at the same time maintaining its position against the memorandum.