Insight: Greece party talks framed by unreality, punctuated by insults

[WestVirginiaRebel]

Yahoo News:

Athens (Reuters) - "Gentlemen, we are finished," said the patrician President, calling an abrupt halt to two hours of baiting and cat-calling between furious Greek politicians. "I'm starting to get upset myself now. We are finished."

The final collapse of talks to forge a new Greek government triggered repeat elections and fears of a chaotic exit from the euro zone. But it is the manner of that collapse, the acrimony and rancor cited by Karolos Papoulias, that bodes ill for efforts after June polls to pull Greece back from the brink.

"It was a complete madhouse," a source at the socialist PASOK party told Reuters after their leader, Evangelos Venizelos, returned from the May 17 showdown. "The discussion was unbelievable."

Similar florid accounts emerged from other quarters.

When conservative New Democracy leader Antonis Samaras, 60, deserted a technocrat government to force May 6 elections, he was confident of a mandate for austerity measures demanded by European capitals for a 130 billion euro bailout package.

That calculation failed dramatically.

Voters infuriated by grinding poverty, spending cuts and corruption, punished Samaras and fellow mainstream party leader Evangelos Venizelos. Leftist Alexis Tsipras, 37, emerged with the power to block them. Greece, he said, could ditch its spending cuts and renounce its debts to EU partners, yet enlist their help in keeping the euro currency some 80 percent of Greeks cherish.

"Pythagoras didn't manage to square the circle and god knows these guys don't know how to either," said one EU diplomat in Brussels, echoing widespread sentiment in European capitals.

"The Greeks seem to have no understanding of the seriousness of their predicament and that is a great source of frustration. There's a breaking point and I think we're getting close to it."

A sense of unreality was only underlined by the strutting theatricals of a rightist party, Golden Dawn, which polled nearly seven percent. Nazi-style salutes and accusations of foreign conspiracy drew derision from the mainstream parties, whose failures had opened the door to them.

In nine days of talks, rivals Venizelos, 54, and Samaras, denied a majority even if they could bury their own differences, rained pressure on Tsipras and his SYRIZA party.

Tsipras, for his part, seemed to thrive in the limelight, cultivating a relaxed demeanor, an easy walk, smiling and joking, the man who would square the circle.

Samaras, scion of a distinguished Greek political and literary family, arrived at meetings with quick, long, impatient strides; behind him a failed campaign, distinguished for many by his perhaps somewhat insensitive use of the theme tune of the movie "Pirates of the Caribbean" with its unfortunate overtones of looted treasure and overseas havens for the lawless.

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