Political ideologies

Former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis claimed on Thursday that former coalition partner Panos Kammenos was in favor of Greece's return to its national currency during the tumultuous first year of the SYRIZA-led government term.

The parliamentary debate on which articles of the Greek Constitution will be amended in the parliamentary session after the next general election led to a battle royal between Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and main opposition New Democracy leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis with mutual recriminations about exploiting the process of revising the country's basic law to achieve partisan electoral aims.

History is littered with all manner of what-ifs, which remain unanswered and are only discussed by historians and armchair pundits.

I was thinking the other day how different things would have turned out for Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and Greece if he had been wiser in his selection of coalition partners and government officials from the outset.

Conservative leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis on Wednesday reiterated his proposal for the establishment of private universities under the supervision of a strong independent authority and suggested that if ruling SYRIZA votes for all the amendments proposed by New Democracy, his party will do the same.

They said that starting on Monday, they would be present in the parliament building and hold press conferences but would not participate in the plenum debate.

Police on Monday were seeking the perpetrators behind an early morning attack on the offices of neonazi Golden Dawn in Aspropyrgos, western Attica.

The attack, which was carried out using a home-made explosive device, occurred at 2.30 a.m. and caused damage to the party's first-floor offices.

There were no injuries. 

Opposition leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis believes the government will not wait until the last possible time - next October - to call an election, but will move up the polls to May 26, to coincide with the elections for local and regional councils and the European Parliament.

"Matrozos," a poem by Georgios Stratigis which was the highlight of Friday's clash between Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and his former coalition partner Panos Kammenos during last night's Parliament debate ends with a tight embrace.

Breaking the calm before the inevitable storm, erstwhile allies Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and Independent Greeks leader Panos Kammenos crossed swords on Friday during a heated Parliament debate which ended with the ratification of "North Macedonia's" NATO accession protocol with 153 for and 140 against.

If there is one thing the ruling leftist SYRIZA party and conservative opposition New Democracy agree on - or agree to disagree on, at least - it is that the primary surplus targets Greece needs to achieve over the coming years need to be relaxed. The country needs some fiscal leeway to cut taxes. There is no other way.