Even after the scuffles between police and anarchists erupted into clouds of tear gas on June 15, Giorgos Liolios did not leave Syntagma Square. For more than a year, Liolis, a 37-year old Athenian struggling to keep his small bakery afloat, was part of the silent majority that gave Prime Minister George Papandreou the benefit of the doubt. But after a year of austerity left him nearly broke, his brother unemployed and the debt-ridden country no better off, he drove to Athens from his suburb to stand alongside thousands of angry Greeks who, for weeks, had transformed Syntagma into a mini-Tahrir Square, complete with drum circles, tents and Cretan rebel songs.
“Everyone in that building should be ashamed,” he says, pointing to the parliament building, which is now surrounded by protesters waving banners depicting Papandreou as Judas and a donkey. “They want us to sacrifice, but we need to see why we’re sacrificing. As Greeks, we just want to live with enough money to get by, to have a little dignity. We can’t do that anymore. We can’t take it anymore. Why can’t George Papandreou understand that?”
It’s now clear that Papandreou got the message. After spending much of Wednesday huddled with advisers — and talking to Antonis Samaras, leader of the main opposition party New Democracy — the beleaguered prime minister is said to have considered resigning to make way for a coalition government. But he backed away from those reports in a short televised speech Wednesday night. “Tomorrow, I’m going to form a new government and ask for a vote of confidence from parliament,” he said shortly before 10pm. “The time has come for responsibility.” Samaras responded with his own televised speech and said that the country and markets no longer had faith in PASOK, the political party Papandreou leads, and which his father founded.
Pressure on Papandreou has been building for weeks. On June 13 Standard & Poor’s downgraded Greece’s credit rating, handing it the lowest rating in the world and noting the country is “increasingly likely” to face debt restructuring. With his poll ratings in free fall and his own deputies defecting from the Party, Papandreou seems to be running out of options. Some analysts wondered if he would even last the day as Premier.
