Mixed poll as ND ends first year in office

Lead slightly down but PM well ahead

George Papandreou speaks on Saturday at PASOK’s Athens congress, which ended yesterday with the election of 150 members to the new, 300-strong national council, which will replace the former central committee.

On the eve of the conservative government’s first anniversary in office, and as the main opposition party wound up a congress billed as a major renewal drive, a new poll yesterday showed New Democracy’s electoral lead over PASOK as having shrunk slightly.

But Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis far outstripped PASOK leader George Papandreou as best-fitted to rule the country, according to the nationwide survey by Opinion pollsters, conducted from February 14-March 2 and published in the Sunday Eleftherotypia.

Some 49 percent of respondents named the PM, while Papandreou enjoyed a 32.3 percent backing. A further 15.3 percent said neither was suited for the job. Some 36.1 percent said they would vote ND, were elections to be held now, and 32 percent chose PASOK.

In the March 7, 2004 elections, ND got 45.36 percent and PASOK 40.55.

With Karamanlis due tomorrow to provide his first overall account of the government’s work over the past year, government officials yesterday were upbeat.

“We must not forget that, over the past year, this government took on — without considering the political cost — problems that nobody had dared touch in the past,” Interior Minister Prokopis Pavlopoulos said.

Development Minister Dimitris Sioufas said the government still had to cope with serious challenges inherited from the Socialists.

“We are intensifying our efforts,” he told party officials. “We are setting up a new framework for development, and addressing citizens’ everyday problems. We are on a head-on collision course with entangled interests and corruption.”

But while extolling the government’s efforts over the past year, ND secretary Vangelis Meimarakis on Saturday sounded a warning note.

“We are proud that Costas Karamanlis is our prime minister,” he told a party meeting in Thessaloniki. “But we demand dialogue, coordination, circumspection and long-term strategy. There must be no moves that could be misinterpreted, so that we can retain our reserves of trust among Greek citizens.”

Speaking at the end of his party’s 7th congress in Athens yesterday, Papandreou said the government’s paramount trait over the past year was its “lack of credibility.”