Guardian
November 3, 2011
As these lines are being written, it is now clear that George Papandreou's premiership is into its last few days, if not hours. The Greek prime minister has now lost the support of his party and many MPs as well as junior and cabinet ministers have openly stated their lack of confidence in the government. As we move to the "day after", there are basically two options.
On the one hand, there's the possibility of an internal change in the leadership of the Pasok party's parliamentary group, leading effectively to the installation of a new prime minister with single-party support. There are no obvious candidates for this job: with Pasok MPs from all corners of the party voicing their discontent with past, present and future policies (including the referendum – which the PM has now conceded will have to be cancelled), any new party leader will face internal opposition or, at best, will operate in an environment of disorganisation and delegitimisation. The current finance minister, Evangelos Venizelos, could be the only serious candidate. After all, he is the one who challenged Papandreou for the leadership of Pasok in 2007 and his public statements immediately after returning from Cannes today had a strong sense of leadership.
More likely is the brokering of a cross-party agreement for a transitory unity government, which will oversee the ratification of last month's agreement by parliament and lead the country to an early election – perhaps as soon as the second week of December. Already, the leader of New Democracy, the main opposition party, has signalled that – given the right circumstances – they are willing to support the Eurozone agreement (under a transitory non-partisan government) in order to facilitate political transition and, crucially, the release of the next tranche of Eurozone funding (the sixth instalment).
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