Farmer noose tightens
Exactly halfway through their four-year term, government officials were involved in an angry exchange with the opposition over the weekend as protesting farmers seemed poised to cast a shadow over Prime Minister Costas Simitis’s televised news conference presenting his government’s achievements since the April 9, 2000, elections. The government charges that the conservative and Communist opposition parties have been behind protesting cotton farmers who are demanding subsidies for produce that exceed EU quotas. On a tour of the Ionian islands, Simitis reacted furiously at the roadblocks that began in earnest on Friday. He noted that 40 percent of farmers’ incomes came from EU subsidies and that the government had managed to keep these coming at least until 2006. But he stressed that farmers had to stick to the quotas or all of them would suffer by having to share the specified amount among legally – and illegally – produced products. «What kind of social conscience is this?» he demanded in a speech on Cephalonia on Saturday. «How can we blackmail others by closing roads? Why? So that illegality can be accepted? But illegality cannot pass, because if this illegality passes, then all illegal acts will be acceptable,» Simitis said. He demanded that opposition parties take a stand on EU regulations. «If they say they should apply, they should tell their supporters to go home, to get off the roads.» Although organizers have not been able to gather the number of tractors that have marked previous protests – prompting Communist Party Euro MP Yiannis Patakis to call on them to get «off their couch» – they blocked off major roads at several points over the weekend and appeared poised to cut Greece into two by collecting farm vehicles near the Vale of Tempe in central Greece. Roadblocks had been set up at at the 280th kilometer of Athens-Thessaloniki road at Almyros, forcing drivers to take a tortuous detour toward Domokos, and then another detour because of roadblocks at Domokos. Those headed for Trikala and Karditsa also have had to go through secondary roads. Farmers blocked the Athens-Thessaloniki train line at Domokos for a while. Others blocked the old National Road between Thessaloniki and Veria, at the Loudias River bridge, the Thessaloniki-Edessa highway at Goumenissa and set up roadblocks at Kleidi in Imathia province. Government spokesman Christos Protopappas yesterday demanded that the conservative New Democracy party reply whether «it supports the effort to violate the EU regulations.» He said only a few of Greece’s 80,000 cotton producers were protesting. ND spokesman Theodoros Roussopoulos replied that the government «cannot act as a judge, slandering and accusing others about the results of its own lack of responsibility… ND has expressed clear views on all aspects of the farmers’ problems.»
