Pressure on government grows

Polls show support waning as internal disputes persist; foreign minister does not rule out early elections

If Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis was looking for a quiet week before his keynote speech at the Thessaloniki International Fair on Saturday, it does not look like he will get it, as an opinion poll yesterday showed only a slender gap between New Democracy and PASOK and the conservatives continue to be dogged by internal disputes.

The premier will probably feel that his foreign minister, Dora Bakoyannis, has not helped the situation by claiming that the government will call early elections if any of its 152 MPs votes against one if its draft laws.

New Democracy has a majority of just two in Parliament and there has been speculation about whether former Aegean Minister Aristotelis Pavlidis and former Culture Minister Petros Tatoulis could soon be removed from the party’s parliamentary group.

Pavlidis has been linked to a blackmail scandal while Tatoulis has repeatedly criticized his government’s policies in interviews and on the Internet. Tatoulis struck out yesterday at Interior Minister Prokopis Pavlopoulis, saying that his attempts to reform local government had failed. Several other deputies have also recently expressed dissatisfaction with the government’s policies.

Presumably in a bid to deter internal dissent, Bakoyannis said that if any of the rebels choose to express their chagrin by voting against one of the government’s bills, early elections would be called so the ruling conservatives could strengthen their majority. “Costas Karamnalis and the government will not be held hostage by anyone,” Bakoyannis told Sunday’s Eleftherotypia.

However, an opinion poll published yesterday suggested that things would not be so clearly in favor of New Democracy if elections were held now. The survey by Kappa Research puts the difference between the two parties at 1.2 percent – 29.3 percent for ND against 28.1 for PASOK.

The prime minister will take heart from the fact that the same poll shows 51.3 percent of those questioned believe that his party will win the next general election. Only 19 percent said that PASOK would gain more votes than the conservatives.