PM Antonis Samaras stages high-stakes attempt to avoid snap election and to appease the country's creditors
The spectre of Greece reigniting the eurozone crisis hung over an emergency meeting of the country's coalition leaders on Wednesday as the prime minister, Antonis Samaras, sought to defuse the turmoil that followed hisdecision to shut down ERT, the nation's state-run broadcaster.
After 48 hours of high-stakes brinkmanship by his junior partners, Samaras, whose centre-right New Democracy party narrowly won elections last June, went into the talks in reportedly conciliatory mood.
With the alternative being a potentially disastrous snap poll for Greece, aides said it was vital a solution was found. "The other option, putting Greece through fresh elections, would be mad," said one. "A compromise has to be found."
But the row over ERT, closed by Samaras in a bid to get 4,000 employees off the public payroll by the end of the year, has increasingly dominated headlines.
Instead of agreeing with a move that was aimed at placating the EU and IMF, the international creditors on which the debt-stricken country depends, his two junior leftwing allies have stringently opposed it, intensifying the faultlines in an alliance that was uneasy from the outset.
Evangelos Venizelos, leader of the socialist Pasok party, who has seen his own support plunge since he entered the coalition, has demanded that all 2,700 employees be reinstated before the public broadcaster is restructured.
Fotis Kouvellis, leader of the small Democratic Left (Dimar) party, said the state-run channel must be switched back on, in compliance with a high court decision earlier this week, before he even begins to talk about reforms.
Despite mass protests and opposition from striking trade unions, the conservatives have insisted the public broadcaster remain off air until a leaner and more efficient state TV and radio network is set up.
"It's fairly simple: a mistake has been made and it must be corrected," Pasok's spokeswoman, Fofi Gennimata, said before the meeting. "It requires bravery to correct a mistake, but that is necessary. It's not acceptable for an elected government to fail to comply with a high court order."
Samaras has also come under pressure from Germany, the main provider of Greece's €240bn (£205bn) in rescue funds, to end the crisis. Officials say Berlin is in no mood to have Athens reignite the debt crisis "just when Germans are beginning to forget it" in the countdown to the country's own elections in September.
As the only European country in history to have shut down its own state-run television and radio network, the government has also faced pressure from public broadcasters across the continent to reopen ERT.
With Pasok and Dimar badly trailing in the polls, snap elections, are the last thing either needs. "Samaras clearly miscalculated the effect his decision would have," said the prominent political commentator Pandelis Kapsis. "And since then all three [governing] parties have become victims of their own rhetoric. The possibility, this week, of the government collapsing was very real … From the start this was a crisis that didn't need to happen. It was born of mismanagement."
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