Another fine interview by Paul Jay of The Real News Network, this time with class action attorney Dimitri Lascaris. A full transcript is here.
Some highlights:
The anti-bailout parties, which basically means all the parties except PASOK and New Democracy, collectively have garnered 58 percent of the popular vote. However, it appears that the pro-bailout parties are going to form the next government, although there are—there’s no assurance of that happening, for a variety of reasons.
>snip<
I think the key difference is that the two parties that have clearly evinced an intention to respect the bailout agreement, assuming that that, practically speaking, can be done, namely, New Democracy and PASOK, now have enough seats between them or appear to have enough seats between them to form a majority government. So were they minded to form a coalition together and alone, then they could have a majority in Parliament. The complication, the principal complication (it’s by no means the only one) that they confront, or at least that New Democracy confronts, is that PASOK is saying that it will not enter into coalition with New Democracy unless SYRIZA and the Democratic Left were to join. And it seems quite clear that SYRIZA has no interest in doing that. It probably—the Democratic Left would be somewhat less opposed to joining and may very well be prepared to do that if SYRIZA were prepared to do it, but I think there’s very little prospect of SYRIZA doing it.
Having said that, I think that this is all bluster and at the end of the day PASOK will capitulate, as it has repeatedly throughout the last several years, or since it most recently took power, to the demands of the EU. It will form a coalition, I expect, with New Democracy. And there will be an attempt—and I put it no higher than that—to respect the essential terms of the bailout agreement. But it’s my expectation, because those terms are so draconian, that ultimately that will fail and we’re going to find ourselves in a massive world of uncertainty very shortly, notwithstanding the fact that the EU elite and the governments of the United States and Canada got what they wanted, which is control of the Parliament by the pro-bailout parties in Greece.
