Sep 24th, 2015 Greece’s newly appointed government suffered its first resignation

·         It took less than 24 hours for Greece’s newly appointed government to suffer its first loss. The deputy transport minister Dimitris Kammenos was forced to resign due to a string of homophobic and anti-Semitic tweets which were published in his account @portaporta. In addition, there were tweets where he was accusing Tsipras as more criminal than Papandreou.

 

       Kammenos’ resignation was the result of serious allegations from social media, political parties and Tsipras’ internal opposition which is named ‘movement of 53’.

Dimitris Kammenos is MP of Independent Greeks (nationalists), which is SYRIZA’s governmental ally. Although he has the same name as the leader of Independent Greeks and Minister of Defence, Panos Kammenos, there are not relatives. 

Kammenos denied allegations and asked Cyber Crime Unit to determine if his account was hacked. However, the same person was accused by Greece’s Central Israeli Council last June, when during the pre-referendum period, he published the photo of Auswitch concentration camp entrance, in which he had electronically replaced the original title ‘arbeit macht frei’ with the basic theme of Yes campaign ‘We stay in Europe’.

·         Greece’s Finance ministers, Tsakalotos, Alexiadis and Houliarakis made statements indicating increases of taxes and abolition of tax exemptions. There are linkages that a single set of tax rates will apply to all sources of income i.e. salary works, pensioners and property owners. 

·         Labor minister Katrougalos stated that new cuts in pensions are inevitable. According to 3^rd MoU, there will be a reduction in pensions’ expenditure by 3.5 bios euros by 2018. The experts committee on social security will deliver its plan by first week of October.  

·         ECB's Draghi stated that he could bring back Greek debt waiver after successful completion of Greek program’s evaluation. He also mentioned that the discussion regarding debt sustainability could start immediately after the completion of banks’ recapitalisation and program’s evaluation.    

Risk assessment. As it was stated before, the coalition government between SYRIZA (pro Europe left) and Independent Greeks (nationalists) is tactical, is based on opportunistic objectives and may be short term. Although it could be justified during anti memorandum era, it becomes groundless after the July 13^th agreement and 3^rd MoU.

The political party Independent Greeks includes a significant part of local ‘trash’ populistic politics whose popularity is based on anti-Semitic, homophobic, racist rhetoric.  Consequently, Dimitris Kammenos’ case is not unique, there were incidents in the past (i.e. the attack of another IG' MP Nicolopoulos who posted a homophobic tweet against Luxemburg's prime minister) and we may see more to come.

This case brings to surface several points:

1.       The power of social media which ensure transparency in local politics. Although Kammenos was very keen in publishing racist and homophobic twits, he denied allegations and close down his account. This initiated a significant number of posts with previous Kammenos’ tweets showing its unacceptable political behaviour.

2.       Tsipras faced for the first time, the pressure from the so called ‘Movement of 53’ which is SYRIZA’s internal opposition. It attacked the Prime Minister’s decision to accept the appointment of Kammenos and accelerated his forced resignation. The movement of 53 carries on with allegations against the appointment of Bolaris (ex-PASOK minister) to the post of deputy minister of Agriculture. 

 

        3.       Kammenos' incident came just after Martin Schultz questioned Tsipras' decision to form coalition with a nationalistic party instead of other centre left parties such as PASOK and Potami.  

4.       although Dimitris Kammenos was forced to resign, he remains MP of Independent Greeks which means that he continues to support the coalition SYRIZA – Independent Greeks. This is also politically unacceptable for European political ethics.  

5.       as it was stated before the 3rd MoU is frontloading and new government will need to ratify and implement a significant number of measures, during the next 50 days. These measures will impact local vested interests and SYRIZA’s core of its electorate. Although Kammenos’ resignation represents an incident of significant importance, it distracts local public opinion from main political agenda. We may see more similar incidents in the following weeks which will distract public opinion

6.       It is still uncertain if Tsipras get rid of 'Independent Greeks'

  and form coalition government with PASOK, Potami and potentially Centrist Union. However, pressures to do so will further intensify. In addition, it is not certain that Independent Greeks will support all forthcoming legislation. Last but not least, it is highly likely that New Democracy won’t support all SYRIZA's legislation and won't join a coalition government due to its planned conference to elect its new leadership.