spice756
11th December 2008, 02:31
Looking at this articale it looks like New Democracy party is pro-business .It looks like the government is getting more and more pro-business .
Other case of social democratic getting destroyed.
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Dec. 11 (Bloomberg) -- Two Athens policemen charged with the shooting of a teenager that touched off five days of rioting were ordered to remain in jail pending trial, as a previously planned general strike shut down much of Greece and disrupted travel.
Rioters attacked the courthouse during the officers’ hearing yesterday, and two people were injured, the Associated Press reported. One officer was charged with murder and the other with being an accomplice, AP said. No trial date was set.
The government, shaken by a slowing economy and criticism of its failure to contain the crisis, said yesterday it would provide aid for businesses damaged by the unrest.
Labor groups representing about half the workforce rebuffed Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis (http://search.bloomberg.com/search?q=Kostas+Karamanlis&site=wnews&client=wnews&proxystylesheet=wnews&output=xml_no_dtd&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&filter=p&getfields=wnnis&sort=date:D:S:d1)’s call to cancel rallies in Athens to prevent more clashes. Yesterday’s general strike, the third this year, was called to protest rising prices and state asset sales, and to demand more government spending on social areas including education.
Youths wearing helmets and hoods threw rocks and other debris at riot police guarding the parliament house. Protesters also fought police in Thessaloniki, the second-biggest city.
The chaos is shaking Karamanlis’s pro-business New Democracy party, which has a one-vote parliamentary majority. Opposition leader George Papandreou (http://search.bloomberg.com/search?q=George+Papandreou&site=wnews&client=wnews&proxystylesheet=wnews&output=xml_no_dtd&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&filter=p&getfields=wnnis&sort=date:D:S:d1)’s Panhellenic Socialist Movement, or Pasok, is leading opinion polls for the first time in eight years. Papandreou, the son and grandson of former prime ministers, has called for early elections.
Karamanlis, nephew of yet another former prime minister, is unlikely to agree, some analysts say. The last general elections were held last year.
Forcing Election ‘Difficult’
“The government won re-election not that long ago, so there’s no reason for them to want one at this stage,” said Chris Pryce (http://search.bloomberg.com/search?q=Chris+Pryce&site=wnews&client=wnews&proxystylesheet=wnews&output=xml_no_dtd&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&filter=p&getfields=wnnis&sort=date:D:S:d1), a director at Fitch Ratings. “It would be very difficult to force them to have one against their own interests.”
The strike, announced on Nov. 28, shut government offices and disrupted transportation. Air-traffic controllers walked off the job, halting flights by Aegean Airways SA and Olympic Airways SA.
Karamanlis called for calm. “The government is determined to anchor a feeling of security for all citizens and also to support businesses,” he said in a televised address yesterday.
Damage to businesses and lost sales in the country’s two biggest cities may come to more than 1 billion euros ($1.3 billion), Kathimerini said, citing the Athens Chamber of Commerce. About 220 businesses in the capital, employing between 600 and 800 people, have been affected.
Business Aid Package
The aid package includes subsidized loans, a one-time payment of 10,000 euros ($13,000) to small businesses, suspension of pension contributions and a three-month payment of salaries for businesses unable to reopen by Dec. 20.
Economy Minister George Alogoskoufis (http://search.bloomberg.com/search?q=George+Alogoskoufis&site=wnews&client=wnews&proxystylesheet=wnews&output=xml_no_dtd&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&filter=p&getfields=wnnis&sort=date:D:S:d1) said it was still too early to estimate the cost of the damage.
The riots began after about 30 youths attacked a police patrol car in the Exarhia district of Athens on Dec. 6. Alexis Grigoropoulos, 15, was killed.
A defense lawyer for the policemen accused in the case said the boy was killed by a ricocheting bullet, the AP said.
Kevin Featherstone, director of the Hellenic Observatory (http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/hellenicObservatory/) at the London School of Economics, said the riots were rooted in anger at both parties over a culture of corruption. Greece is the most corrupt in Western Europe and ranks 24th of the 27 European Union countries, according to Berlin-based Transparency International (http://www.transparency.org/).
‘Sense of Frustration’
“It’s a plague on both houses,” Featherstone said. “It’s a sense of frustration. How do you change a system that has corruption so deeply embedded?”
Sixty-eight percent of Greeks surveyed Dec. 8 and 9 said the government hadn’t handled the crisis properly, according to a poll of 478 people conducted by Public Issue and published in Kathimerini yesterday.
New Democracy has 151 of parliament’s 300 seats and is fighting declining voter popularity over new taxes and a series of scandals. Pledges that it will show no leniency to police responsible for the teenager’s death failed to stem the protests.
Polls since September show Papandreou’s opposition party leading New Democracy after the government announced new taxes on dividends, stock options, self-employed workers and small businesses.
The taxes were introduced as slowing growth, higher inflation and interest rates has hampered the government’s ability to meet budget targets as well as provide relief for lower-income groups. Economic growth in the country of 11 million is set to slow to 2.7 percent next year, the slowest since at least 2001
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aj4RRl1kpiIw&refer=home
Other case of social democratic getting destroyed.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Dec. 11 (Bloomberg) -- Two Athens policemen charged with the shooting of a teenager that touched off five days of rioting were ordered to remain in jail pending trial, as a previously planned general strike shut down much of Greece and disrupted travel.
Rioters attacked the courthouse during the officers’ hearing yesterday, and two people were injured, the Associated Press reported. One officer was charged with murder and the other with being an accomplice, AP said. No trial date was set.
The government, shaken by a slowing economy and criticism of its failure to contain the crisis, said yesterday it would provide aid for businesses damaged by the unrest.
Labor groups representing about half the workforce rebuffed Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis (http://search.bloomberg.com/search?q=Kostas+Karamanlis&site=wnews&client=wnews&proxystylesheet=wnews&output=xml_no_dtd&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&filter=p&getfields=wnnis&sort=date:D:S:d1)’s call to cancel rallies in Athens to prevent more clashes. Yesterday’s general strike, the third this year, was called to protest rising prices and state asset sales, and to demand more government spending on social areas including education.
Youths wearing helmets and hoods threw rocks and other debris at riot police guarding the parliament house. Protesters also fought police in Thessaloniki, the second-biggest city.
The chaos is shaking Karamanlis’s pro-business New Democracy party, which has a one-vote parliamentary majority. Opposition leader George Papandreou (http://search.bloomberg.com/search?q=George+Papandreou&site=wnews&client=wnews&proxystylesheet=wnews&output=xml_no_dtd&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&filter=p&getfields=wnnis&sort=date:D:S:d1)’s Panhellenic Socialist Movement, or Pasok, is leading opinion polls for the first time in eight years. Papandreou, the son and grandson of former prime ministers, has called for early elections.
Karamanlis, nephew of yet another former prime minister, is unlikely to agree, some analysts say. The last general elections were held last year.
Forcing Election ‘Difficult’
“The government won re-election not that long ago, so there’s no reason for them to want one at this stage,” said Chris Pryce (http://search.bloomberg.com/search?q=Chris+Pryce&site=wnews&client=wnews&proxystylesheet=wnews&output=xml_no_dtd&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&filter=p&getfields=wnnis&sort=date:D:S:d1), a director at Fitch Ratings. “It would be very difficult to force them to have one against their own interests.”
The strike, announced on Nov. 28, shut government offices and disrupted transportation. Air-traffic controllers walked off the job, halting flights by Aegean Airways SA and Olympic Airways SA.
Karamanlis called for calm. “The government is determined to anchor a feeling of security for all citizens and also to support businesses,” he said in a televised address yesterday.
Damage to businesses and lost sales in the country’s two biggest cities may come to more than 1 billion euros ($1.3 billion), Kathimerini said, citing the Athens Chamber of Commerce. About 220 businesses in the capital, employing between 600 and 800 people, have been affected.
Business Aid Package
The aid package includes subsidized loans, a one-time payment of 10,000 euros ($13,000) to small businesses, suspension of pension contributions and a three-month payment of salaries for businesses unable to reopen by Dec. 20.
Economy Minister George Alogoskoufis (http://search.bloomberg.com/search?q=George+Alogoskoufis&site=wnews&client=wnews&proxystylesheet=wnews&output=xml_no_dtd&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&filter=p&getfields=wnnis&sort=date:D:S:d1) said it was still too early to estimate the cost of the damage.
The riots began after about 30 youths attacked a police patrol car in the Exarhia district of Athens on Dec. 6. Alexis Grigoropoulos, 15, was killed.
A defense lawyer for the policemen accused in the case said the boy was killed by a ricocheting bullet, the AP said.
Kevin Featherstone, director of the Hellenic Observatory (http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/hellenicObservatory/) at the London School of Economics, said the riots were rooted in anger at both parties over a culture of corruption. Greece is the most corrupt in Western Europe and ranks 24th of the 27 European Union countries, according to Berlin-based Transparency International (http://www.transparency.org/).
‘Sense of Frustration’
“It’s a plague on both houses,” Featherstone said. “It’s a sense of frustration. How do you change a system that has corruption so deeply embedded?”
Sixty-eight percent of Greeks surveyed Dec. 8 and 9 said the government hadn’t handled the crisis properly, according to a poll of 478 people conducted by Public Issue and published in Kathimerini yesterday.
New Democracy has 151 of parliament’s 300 seats and is fighting declining voter popularity over new taxes and a series of scandals. Pledges that it will show no leniency to police responsible for the teenager’s death failed to stem the protests.
Polls since September show Papandreou’s opposition party leading New Democracy after the government announced new taxes on dividends, stock options, self-employed workers and small businesses.
The taxes were introduced as slowing growth, higher inflation and interest rates has hampered the government’s ability to meet budget targets as well as provide relief for lower-income groups. Economic growth in the country of 11 million is set to slow to 2.7 percent next year, the slowest since at least 2001
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aj4RRl1kpiIw&refer=home