Antonis Samaras proposes pared-down state broadcaster after abrupt closure causes deep rifts in ruling coalition
Greece's prime minister, Antonis Samaras, has offered to reopen a pared-down version of the state broadcaster under temporary management and reshuffle the cabinet, a government official said on Monday,yesterday, to try to defuse a political crisis and avoid a snap election.
ERT's abrupt closure last week, carried out in the name of austerity to please EU and International Monetary Fund lenders, triggered a deep rift in the ruling coalition, throwing the debt-choked nation back into turmoil just as faint hopes of a recovery had begun to sprout.
Samaras made the offer to revive the broadcaster during talks with his coalition – allowing the two junior parties, the Socialist PASOK and Democratic Left, to pick the deputy minister who will oversee ERT in a transitional form. "It's a last-ditch move by the prime minister to reach a compromise and avoid elections," the official said.
The transitional broadcaster would pave the way for the smaller, cheaper public broadcaster that Samaras had initially promised would replace ERT. The official said Samaras had also offered to reshuffle his cabinet at the end of June and update the coalition agreement with his allies to try to improve co-operation between the parties.
Exactly a year after a parliamentary election brought Samaras and his two leftist allies to power, the parties have fed fears of a hugely disruptive snap poll by refusing to compromise over an entity widely unloved until its shock overnight closure.
"It's clear that over the last days any semblance of logic in dealing with this issue has been lost," said Costas Panagopoulos, head of polling company ALCO "The most absurd thing is that we are talking about a possible destruction of the country over ERT."
Aware that his allies stand to lose heavily in any election, the conservative Samaras had refused in a flurry of speeches to turn the "sinful" ERT back on, vowing to fight to modernise a country he said had become a Jurassic Park of inefficiency and corruption.
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