<\/p>\n
You cannot complain. Last week you were the first to be informed of what was to happen. We had analyzed why Mr. Papandreou will resign (I wrote about the last 48 hours of him as Prime Minister) and on Friday night he announced in parliament his intention to step down as Prime Minister, once a solution is found.<\/p>\n
“Why didn’t he resign immediately?”<\/strong><\/p>\n My colleagues in the office kept on asking me: “Ok, if he announced that he will resign, why didn’t he do this immediately?”<\/p>\n According to the Greek constitution, there is a procedure that has to be followed. If he would have resigned without there being an alternative, the country would risk remaining without a government on Monday (so in today’s Eurogroup there would be no one to represent Greece).<\/p>\n By tomorrow, we are waiting for the names of the new government and probably on Wednesday the new ministers will give the oath to Greek democracy and God.<\/p>\n The new government’s mission<\/strong><\/p>\n This new government will exist just to sign the agreement with the troika, cash in the tranches that Greece needs, convert the bonds (PSI procedure) and finish all arrangements in order for the country to remain on the safe side. Then it will resign and elections will be held.<\/p>\n Right now, the choice for Prime Minister that both main political parties have agreed on is Mr. Lucas Papademos, ex vice president of the European Central Bank. I personally doubt he will accept to be an interim Prime minister for just 100 days, but for the moment this is the official announcement. Plus the political parties are still fighting over the names and the details of the agreement. But 99.9% everything will be resolved this week. If they have done it so far, they will not risk to lose all at this level.<\/p>\n An electoral campaign has started. Its duration: 100 days<\/strong><\/p>\n The country has entered the path to elections. Both socialists and conservatives agreed that once the “government of national unity” resolve the basic problems, it will resign immediately and we will head to elections. Many politicians also speak about the 19th<\/sup> of February, as the date that these elections will be held. So while the government will be stabilizing the country, the politicians will be preparing for new fights and elections. (I hope that at least this time they will be wiser compared to the past)<\/p>\n Is Greece saved? No, it just avoided an “immediate death”<\/strong><\/p>\n Many believe that Greece is saved just because it will sign this agreement with the troika. No, this is not correct. What is guaranteed is just that it will not suffer an “immediate death” and an uncontrolled bankruptcy. For the next 10 – 15 years the country has to reach an incredibly difficult result, to change 100%, with the minimum possible collateral damage for the society.<\/p>\n But the Greek story of last week will be taught in universities, being part of political sciences (and what to avoid when handling a crisis).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" You cannot complain. Last week you were the first to be informed of what was to happen. We had analyzed why Mr. Papandreou will resign (I wrote about the last 48 hours of him as Prime Minister) and on Friday night he announced in parliament his intention to step down as Prime Minister, once […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":59454,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[216,17,236],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.iliaspapageorgiadis.ro\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10720"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.iliaspapageorgiadis.ro\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.iliaspapageorgiadis.ro\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.iliaspapageorgiadis.ro\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.iliaspapageorgiadis.ro\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10720"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.iliaspapageorgiadis.ro\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10720\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.iliaspapageorgiadis.ro\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.iliaspapageorgiadis.ro\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.iliaspapageorgiadis.ro\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.iliaspapageorgiadis.ro\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}