Greeks like their PM but unhappy with coalition government: poll

[Ostrinski]

ATHENS (Reuters) - Most Greeks are unhappy with their coalition government but continue to support its technocrat Prime Minister Lucas Papademos, an opinion poll showed Saturday.
Pressure is building on Athens to conclude a deal to cut its debt load. Government negotiations with bankers and insurers broke up without agreement Friday, although officials said more talks are likely next week.
The survey by pollster Public Issue for Sunday's Kathimerini newspaper showed that 91 percent of respondents were dissatisfied with the government, up from 80 percent in an early
December poll.
The three-party coalition government was formed in November to push a bailout deal and take the overborrowed country to elections, now tentatively set for April.
Papademos's approval rating remained higher than his government's, though it dropped slightly to 55 percent from 60 percent registered in the December poll.
Also, 50 percent of respondents said they did not see a need for immediate elections.
The poll, conducted on January 5-10 on a nationwide sample of 1,018 Greeks, showed the conservative New Democracy (ND) party maintaining its lead over the PASOK socialists but unable to secure an absolute majority if elections were held today.
New Democracy would win 30.5 percent of the vote versus 14 percent for the socialists and 12.5 percent for the communist party, which is not part of the coalition government.
"The political landscape remains fluid. New Democracy leads but without outright majority," Kathimerini said.
(Reporting by George Georgiopoulos; Editing by Alessandra Rizzo)


http://news.yahoo.com/greeks-pm-unhappy-coalition-government-poll-195414977.html

[GiantMonkeyMan]

I've heard that the recent polls puts this as the possible latest results:

ND (Conservatives) 30.5% 125 MPs
PASOK (Centre/Socialists) 14% 40 MPs
Democratic Left (Leftists) 13.5% 37 MPs
KKE (Communists) 12.5% 35 MPs
SYRIZA (Leftists) 12% 34 MPs
LAOS (Nationalists) 5.5% 12 MPs
Greens 4% 9 MPs
Democratic Alliance (Liberals) 3% 8 MPs

Other/Blank 17%

http://www.defencenet.gr/defence/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31979&Itemid=131

However, I don't speak Greek so I'm not certain about the exact validity or bias. Plus, these sorts of opinion polls mean fuck all considering the terrible methods of collecting evidence.

[Ocean Seal]

I've heard that SYRIZA was a small Trotskyist party which generally won about 2% of the seats? Are they a revolutionary party though? Because that puts support for Marxist parties at 25%. Which is huge.

[FSL]

Papademos's approval rating remained higher than his government's, though it dropped slightly to 55 percent from 60 percent registered in the December poll.
That's ridiculous, don't buy that. When this government was formed the approval rating was even surpassing 80%, according to polls.
They just feel Papademos is the best thing they've got so they try to praise him.

Just to give you a clue on what he really is, while speaking in parliament about the need to reduce private sector wages (especially the "extra" money given on Christmas, Easter and summer holidays that make up 14% of a worker's annual income) he said "At times like these we need to think of the unemployed who get no wages at all".

I think you can understand how the working population feels about him. Even among those who at first had hopes on someone who "isn't a politician", "isn't in it for the money" etc cutting wages doesn't sound all that great.



I've heard that SYRIZA was a small Trotskyist party which generally won about 2% of the seats? Are they a revolutionary party though? Because that puts support for Marxist parties at 25%. Which is huge.
They're not a trotskyist party, they're a coalition of parties (some of them are trotskyist though). The larger one is part of the Party of European Left and I guess would describe itself as "influenced by the marxian critique of capitalism" or something like that.

It does speak in a raised tone at times and plays well the "parliamentary game" (so that people who see the news at night could think of them as a radical opposition) but its policies are keynesian, they want the European Central Bank to print lots and lots of euros to bail us out cheaply and so on and so forth.