Greece’s government: A big clean-up is promised

Date: 12/07/03

The prime minister, Costas Simitis, is tackling corruption in his own party

FLUSHED with self-confidence after Greece's competent six-month stint in the EU presidency, Costas Simitis, the prime minister, has decided it is time to clean up the governing Pan-Hellenic Socialist Movement (known as Pasok) and make it more “European”. With a bright new social-democratic image, the party just might win next April's election, so ensuring that Mr Simitis is the one to welcome the world's sporting elite to next summer's Olympic games in Athens.

His first move was to sack Costas Laliotis, Pasok's secretary-general and a symbol of its outdated populist ways. Mr Laliotis was unpopular with many Greeks because of his cosiness with a group of local building contractors (he served a long stretch as public-works minister) and his diehard anti-Americanism. During the war in Iraq he encouraged the teachers' union to stay off work and take primary-school pupils to shout “American murderers” at demonstrations.

Michalis Chrysohoidis, one of the prime minister's modernising faction, has taken Mr Laliotis's job. As public order minister, he took credit, together with Scotland Yard and the FBI, for the arrest last year of some 20 members of a left-wing terrorist group called November 17, whose victims included one British and several American and Turkish diplomats.

Mr Chrysohoidis will still have his work cut out to persuade voters that Pasok is abandoning its knee-jerk nationalism and its deeply entrenched system of patronage. Party strongmen control most public-sector appointments, from university professors and hospital directors to local government officials and even football referees. Businessmen who deal with state enterprises say corruption is still rife.

In opinion polls Pasok trails New Democracy, the centre-right opposition, by some nine percentage points. But Mr Simitis is still the party's biggest asset. His popularity, though well below its peak three years ago when he steered Greece into the eurozone, is not far behind that of Costas Karamanlis, New Democracy's leader.

To win back the middle-of-the-road voters who decide Greek elections, Mr Simitis is to launch a “social convergence charter” underlining, among other things, his intention to reduce unemployment and make the civil service more honest and efficient - two top priorities for voters.

This week Mr Simitis announced that Pasok's MPs could no longer hold shares in offshore companies, a favourite tax dodge for the politically connected. The Athens stock-exchange watchdog will also scrutinise MPs' brokerage accounts, a measure meant to remove a popular perception that influential Pasok people manipulated the bourse in the boom that preceded Greece's entry into the eurozone.

Has Mr Simitis done enough to reassure Greeks that Pasok is truly changing its ways? Only if he can deliver results. One minister, Stefanos Manikas, was sacked last month over the stock-market scandal. But more resignations (and prosecutions too) will be needed to persuade voters that a clean-up is really under way.

The Greek Prime Minister, Costas Simitis, is tackling corruption in his own party.