With a thin majority of 153 votes out of 300 lawmakers in total, Nea Dimocratia and PASOK approved the multi-bill that will sack more than 25,000 civil workers until the end of 2014. The bill with 109 articles, in fact a new tsunami of austerity measures, includes also provisions for the new taxation system that will robe the last cent from the pocket of the troubled Greek.
“I fully understand the hardship the Greek people are going through during the great crisis,” Finance Minister Yannis Stournaras said during the debate in the Parliament. “But I am fully convinced that the path we have chosen is correct.”
Congrats! You won!
The path-supporter and compassionate finance minister is consequent in this approach: he never cast his vote to the bills he proposes because he is not an elected member of the Greek Parliament.
”New law will put 12,500 public-sector staff, mostly teachers and municipal workers, in a programme that subjects them to involuntary transfers and possible dismissals. It will also pave the way for 15,000 layoffs by the end of next year.
Lawmakers in the 300-seat house backed the cutbacks in an article-by-article vote, with two of the governing coalition’s 155 deputies failing to back crucial articles.
One New Democracy MP, Dimitris Kyriazidis, was absent owing to a family bereavement. But veteran Pasok MP, Apostolos Kaklamanis, failed to turn up for the vote even though he had spoken in the chamber earlier.
In addition, Pasok’s parliamentary group spokesman, Paris Koukoulopoulos, failed to support the article abolishing the municipal police.
It was the first major political test for Prime Minister Antonis Samaras since Democratic Left abandoned his coalition government last month.
The new legislation will put 12,500 public-sector staff, mostly teachers and municipal workers, in a programme that subjects them to involuntary transfers and possible dismissals. It will also pave the way for 15,000 layoffs by the end of next year.
Some 3,000 people protested outside parliament ahead of the vote, chanting anti-austerity slogans in a third straight day of protests.”(full story EnetEnglish.gr)
Wasn’t it Nea Dimocratia and PASOK the two parties that brought us to this situation? Oh wait… They save us now 
