By Penelope Galliou

Period and dash in Samara case the government now puts, moving on to the next day and closing every risk scenario that arose from the deletion of the former prime minister from the ND.

One after the other, the blue-collar officials, even those who in the past were close to the Messinian prime minister, assure that there is no question of the cohesion of the ND parliamentary group, stressing that there are no “spouts” of deletion within the party and appreciating that they will not exist. “ND MPs belong to a faction, not to individuals,” said a parliamentary source, who in the past worked closely with Antonis Samaras.

The Prime Minister himself, as part of a Bloomberg event entitled “The New Era of Greek Banking” sent out the message that the governing majority is stable, while he hastened to close the scenarios that were discussed as a possibility, of the early appeal to the polls. He reiterated his commitment to hold the elections on time, in 2027. “We have 2.5 years based on the popular mandate to implement our policies”, Kyriakos Mitsotakis emphasized, adding that this way “we don’t need to get into discussions of complex political alliances’.
“The last thing we want is to play with government stability,” he pointed out, describing the decision to remove the former prime minister as regrettable and “once and for all”, which, as he said, “we leave behind us.”

The government representative also referred to any MPs who could follow Antonis Samaras in his next moves, with references to the MP George Sympilidiswho is accused of overthrowing the government of Konstantinos Mitsotakis in 1993. at the end of the day we all see the common purpose and duty. What the citizens asked for in 2023, this is what we will be judged by in 2027. We are moving forward united”, emphasized Pavlos Marinakis.

On the other side of Antonis Samaras, criticism is still heavy on the government with reports of “blue SYRIZA” while the possibility of founding a new party by the former prime minister also remains open, after the repetition of such a possibility by their close associate and director of his Press Office, Nikos Tsioutsia, who, when asked about it, kept the possibility open. “I can’t rule out, I can’t confirm, I can’t do anything serious and certain right now,” he said of a possible new party.

Inside the ND, however, they believe that such a move by the former prime minister would be a mistake, while there are also assessments that Mr. Samaras “will not do something that will further damage his reputation”. In any case, Megaros Maximos and Piraeus declare that such a discussion does not concern them.

A clear impression of the parliamentary cohesion and stability of the ruling party will be the discussion and voting of the 2025 budget, which usually involves a vote of confidence in the government. In fact, there are voices within the blue faction, such as that of Nikitas Kaklamanis, who suggest that the prime minister, closing the debate, should emphasize the importance and criticality of the vote in question, in order to “close any paraphilology about the unity of the ND parliamentary group”.

The developments, however, in combination with the polling trends displayed by parties to the right of the ND, but also the image presented by many European countries in this direction, also highlighted a parallel debate within the government and the party. How ND will make its messages more emphatic both to the right and to the center. MPs who belong to the so-called “people’s wing” of the ND believe that there should be a more structured orientation towards the right of the party, but without disrupting the opening that has been made in the center and the “profits” that the government has made from this part of the political map. It is a two-sided effort, they emphasize, which perhaps due to broader trends and situations should be focused more to the right of Piraeus. A government line, which according to Maximos Palace sources is served by the ND government plan.