Venizelos Tries to Quash PASOK Mutiny

PASOK Socialist leader Evangelos Venizelos is struggling to keep his party from breaking apart after 17 of his Members of Parliament defied him and voted against a privatization plan demanded by international lenders.
PASOK has 33 Members of Parliament, including Venizelos – who abstained from voting – but who said he wouldn’t tolerate any of his lawmakers not following his orders to support the government of his rival, New Democracy Conservative leader and Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, who is sending a $17.45 billion spending cut and tax hike plan to Parliament next week.
Venizelos, whose party has fallen to only 5.5 percent of the vote after winning 44 percent in 2009, is facing a growing rebellion from his members who believe the party has abandoned its Socialist principles to support austerity measures aimed at workers, pensioners and the poor. He said he would eject any member who votes against the budget plan.
The privatization vote caused turmoil in the party and led Venizelos to call an emergency meeting from which journalists were barred, but angry exchanges spilled out into the street. “Today in Parliament, we were like a lost herd,” said Cretan MP Nikos Sifounakis. “If we continue like this, the measures won’t pass. The government and PASOK will collapse.”
Following the meeting, MP Michalis Kassis said he was quitting the party but remaining in Parliament as an independent MP. He said Venizelos left him with no choice as he told deputies that whoever fails to vote for the upcoming fiscal and structural measures would be ejected from the party. Kassis accused some of his colleagues of backing Samaras and the coalition government – because they want to become ministers.
He also told journalists that several more PASOK MPs intend to vote against the austerity package in Parliament. The three-party government had 177 out of 300 seats after already losing one MP from New Democracy and another from Democratic Left, which insists it will not support the latest package unless the troika backs down over labor reforms.
Former Agriculture Minister and once a candidate for the PASOK leadership, Kostas Skandalidis reportedly clashed with Venizelos over his handling of the party and refused afterwards to dismiss suggestions that there might be a challenge mounted against the party president. Former minister and PASOK secretary Mariliza Xenogiannakopoulou announced she was quitting the party in protest against austerity measures that Venizelos backs. She is not in Parliament, however, after failing to win a seat in the June 17 elections.