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Greece's Papandreou rules out calling early electionsATHENS, Nov 07, 2010 (dpa - McClatchy-Tribune News Service via COMTEX) -- Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou ruled out calling early national elections on Sunday after his party was projected to win local elections, saying he would continue necessary reforms to pull the county out of a severe financial crisis. Partial official results in eight of 13 races for regional governors, including in the country's largest administrative region of greater Athens, showed the Socialists to be ahead. "The Greek public voted us to power a year ago and today confirmed that they want us to proceed with the necessary changes," Papandreou said in a televised address to the nation. The Socialists, who hold a comfortable parliamentary majority, have passed a wave of austerity measures such as wage and pension cuts and consumer tax increases in exchange for an international bailout package. The vote was seen as a referendum on the austerity measures imposed by the government to ward off bankruptcy. The prime minister had threatened to hold snap national elections if his Socialist PASOK party had not won a clear mandate, which he said the government to implement austerity measures. Greece was not due for another national election until 2013. The country is required to cut spending and restructure large parts of its economy in exchange for the $150 billion rescue plan funded by the International Monetary Fund and the European Union. Athens has pledged to trim its budget deficit to below the EU- mandated limit of 3 per cent of gross domestic product by 2014. To achieve this it has slashed civil servants' pay, cut pensions and increased consumer taxes. It had also promised to restructure money-losing state companies and reform its labor market. ___ (c) 2010, Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH (Hamburg, Germany). Visit dpa on the Internet at http://www.dpa.de/English.82.0.html Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA. |