Greece Has a New Prime Minister, the Conservative Antonis Samaras

Greece has a prime minister. He is Antonis Samaras, the head of the conservative New Democracy Party that won the most parliamentary seats in last Sunday’s election, who was sworn in by the Greek president today.
Mr. Samaras won the support of two other parties, the socialist Pasok and the moderate leftist Dimar, in order to put together the coalition he needed, since his party, the NDP, didn’t win a majority in the new parliament.
He must now name his cabinet, urgently, because the new finance minister will need to attend a meeting of European finance ministers on Thursday, where the hot topic will be - Greece. Greek media are predicting that the new finance minister will be Vassilis Rapanos, an economist and the current head of the Bank of Greece. He was part of the group that led Greece into the Eurozone and would be able to pick up his portfolio quickly.
Mr. Samaras said after his swearing in : “With the aid of God, we will do what is needed to get our country out of the mess it is in. I will ask the new government to work full-throttle to give hope to the Greek people.”
The socialist Pasok Party was important to forming the coalition because its leader, Evangelos Venizelos, had all along taken the position that Pasok would not cooperate in any coalition not led by the left.
That a conservative Greek government is being formed also gives hope to the European Union and the International Monetary Fund that Greece will keep its austerity commitments, even though they may be somewhat eased.
This will keep the conservative German government happy, and it will give a boost to the idea that the Euro and the Eurozone may eventually be able to solve their fiscal problems and leave the crisis behind. German Chancellor Merkel has already invited Mr. Samaras to Berlin for consultations.
On June 29-30 Greece will present its plan for easing its obligations to an EU summit meeting, and afterward, the IMF and representatives of the EU will visit Greece to check on progress so far (there hasn’t been any, really), and to get a sense of what can be produced by the Greek government and economy during the rest of 2012 and 2013.
The leftist party Syriza said today that it is sceptical that the new conservative Greek government can help Greece put its house in order. The Syriza leader said that the first order should be to get rid of favoritism and corruption in the Greek government and to focus on a tough re-negotiation of the terms of Greece’s austerity program so that social needs are met first, before other commitments are carried out.
So, while the Greek crisis is in abeyance for the moment, solving Greece’s fiscal and economic problems will take years, not months, if it ever occurs.
And putting the Greek house in order will not be a complete panacea for the Eurozone since the looming banking crises in Spain and Italy dwarf the Greek problem.