ATHENS: The Greek coalition government’s majority in parliament shrank to just three seats yesterday after a lawmaker rebelled over a controversial new law to extend property taxes to farmland.
Prime Minister Antonis Samaras’s majority of 26 seats after last year’s election has dwindled to the point where it raises the risk of political instability that could hamper recovery and Greece’s ability to meet targets for its international bailout.
Samaras expelled lawmaker Byron Polydoras from the conservatives’ parliamentary group after he refused to back the new tax law demanded by Greece’s lenders.
“Lenders’ greed and poor judgement is leading us straight towards humanitarian crisis,” Polydoras said.
His expulsion reduces the parliamentary group of Samaras’s conservative-Socialist coalition government to 153 in the 300-seat parliament. The new legislation, passed yesterday, replaces a deeply unpopular property levy collected through electricity bills with a broader tax on real estate, including land holdings.
Polydoras had argued that the new tax amounted to confiscation. Greece has suffered six years of recession and record unemployment of about 27 percent as it has enacted austerity policies under the terms of its ¤240bn bailout from the European Union and International Monetary Fund. Technocrat Finance Minister Yannis Stournaras said this would be the last austerity legislation to be put before lawmakers as the Greek economy begins
to recover. REUTERS
