The Greek Parliament approved legislation paving the way for the part-privatisation of the Public Power Corporation (PPC-DEH) but opposition parties did not give up their efforts to force a discussion about a referendum on the sale.

In the House’s reduced summer session, 51 of 100 MPs voted in favour of the creation and sale of the so-called ‘small DEH’, which consists of 30 per cent of the public electricity monopoly. One MP voted ‘present’ and another 46 opposed the legislation, whose passing was one of the six prior actions the government had to fulfil to receive a further 1-billion-euro sub-instalment of bailout funding.

The approval of the legislation, however, did not settle the question of whether members of parliament will have to be recalled from their vacations and a full plenary of parliament be called to debate and vote on whether a plebiscite should be held to decide whether the electricity company should be sold off to private investors.

A discussion between Parliament Speaker Evangelos Meimarakis and the House’s deputy speakers on Thursday ended in those aligned with the two coalition governing parties suggesting that the seven opposition proposals for a debate on a plebiscite for the DEH sell-off should not be counted as one proposal.

They called instead for all the parties to sign the same proposal for a debate on the spin off of 30 per cent of DEH.

The aim of this initiative was to make SYRIZA appear to be cooperating with neofascist Golden Dawn, one of the seven parties calling for a referendum.
The main left wing opposition SYRIZA looked set to boycott the session.

Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, speaking on Thursday at a conference in Athens organised by The Economist, accused SYRIZA of collaborating with Golden Dawn in order to undermine the reforms of his government.

The Greek Prime Minister emphasised that his main priorities are reforms, improvement of public finances, growth and law and order.
Samaras also went on to predict that growth in Greece in 2015 will reach 2.9 per cent.

In the meantime, SYRIZA leader Alexis Tsipras insisted again that his party wanted DEH “unified and public”, noting that electricity should remain “a right and never a luxury”.

In a speech at The Economist conference, the leader of the opposition said the key aim of a SYRIZA-led government would be “the disengagement of Greece from the memorandums”, referring to the country’s loan agreements with international creditors, adding that he intended to relieve Greeks of the
“punitive fixations” of the troika.

Responding to calls for SYRIZA to join the government in possible talks on debt relief in the coming months, Tsipras remarked that European Parliament elections in May, which SYRIZA won, “deprived the government of the legitimacy to bind the country in any way”.

Source: ekathimerini, matrix24