Why is Venizelos downgrading Papandreou’s policy?

On Monday afternoon Evangelos Venizelos proceeded to a complete economic policy negation of the 2 years of Papandreou-Papakonstantinou-Sachinidis. Six months after taking over the finance ministry, he explained that "unfortunately all key macroeconomic and budgetary projections of the original program of the memorandum were not achieved. I'm tired and remaning here to honor my national task."

In fact, at that time Venizelos had deputy finance minister F. Sachinidis beside him, who also bears great responsibility for the failure of the economic plan.

He admitted that in the last 2 years people have suffered heavy taxes that have not worked as expected. It is characteristic that the budget deficit has been revised 3 times only for 2011 and instead of 7.5% will eventually close at about 10%. This means that Greek citizens will see new measures totaling more than 3-4 billion euros in a few months.

Venizelos said: "From May 2010-June 2011, as minister of defense I had the opportunity to express very precise views and stress what I am saying even now, that unfortunately all the key macroeconomic and budgetary projections of the original program were not confirmed.

The predictions about the magnitude of the recession were not confirmed, along with the time of our return to the international markets and the fiscal adjustment. Because one cannot easily achieve fiscal adjustment under conditions of mounting and stacked recession and the increased cost of servicing one’s public debt.

So the question is not whether we can get new receivables or reduce costs even further. This is not enough. The question is whether we can change the overall framework within which we are operating."

Of course Venizelos, as a minister of the previous government, did adopt the initial measures of the memorandum which led us to a dead end. The question is why he chose the given moment to discredit the Papandreou’s and Papakonstantinou's policies, specifically when the Troika delegation and IIF head Charles Dalara are in Athens.

Political analysts say that Venizelos wants:

-    to discredit Papandreou’s period as a PM in view of the crucial intraparty procedures

-    change the mixture of economic policy.