Becca Paez
The Paw Print
Greece’s Cabinet ministers offered their resignations to Prime Minister George Papandreou Tuesday, paving the way for a new coalition government to deal with the country’s ongoing economic crisis.
The move came after Papandreou asked them to quit, the country’s state news agency said. “Prime Minister George Papandreou has asked the members of the Cabinet to have their resignations ready,” the Athens News Agency said without citing sources.
The Socialist Cabinet is due to step down and make way for a coalition of national unity under a deal sealed by the governing and opposition parties on Sunday. However, the new prime minister has yet to be named and when the new Cabinet will be formed remains unclear.
Tourism Minister George Nikitiadis said the entire Cabinet had offered their resignations in order to help the premier. Deputy education minister Evi Christophilopoulou said “we are very close to forming a coalition government.” One minister told Reuters that Papandreou had told his ministers at the meeting that he would probably have settled the name of the new prime minister by Tuesday night and that he had said farewell to them.
Greece’s conservative opposition New Democracy Party said earlier Tuesday that it was expecting the appointment of a new prime minister within the day, Athens News Agency reported. “The issue of the Prime Minister must be resolved immediately… we are waiting for the announcements,” ANA quoted New Democracy spokesman Yiannis Mihelakis as saying in an interview on private television station Antenna.
Mihelakis also said that the new government would include party-political officials, ruling out a government run purely by technocrats, ANA reported. The coalition government will rule only until February.
European Union officials have said the new government has to show it was serious about implementing promises Athens has made to its EU and IMF lenders in return for the 130 billion-euro (about $179 billion) bailout. “It is essential that the entire political class is now restoring the confidence that had been lost in the Greek commitment to the EU/IMF program,” said EU Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn.
What’s Been Said…