Up against new figures that show worsening unemployment in Greece and polls showing his party continuing to run second ahead of the October 5 2009 snap elections, prime minister Costas Karamanlis has lashed out at his opponent as too vague on the economy and says he will not consider a broad coalition government.
 
Karamanlis called snap elections saying that he wanted a fresh mandate for tough economic reforms. The economic crisis has hurt Greece and sent into reverse the trend of several years of economic growth.
 
Even though opinion polls show that George Papandreou’s opposition socialist Pasok party is set to get the largest share of votes – although still not enough for a decisive majority – Karamanlis has insisted that his New Democracy party will not form a post-election coalition.
 
On September 11 2009, Kathimerini said that a poll done on September 7 and 8 gave Pasok 151 seats (41 per cent) and New Democracy 96 seats (35.5 per cent).
 
The Communist Party would get 8.5 per cent, the Popular Orthodox Rally party (LAOS) seven per cent and the Coalition of the Radical Left Syriza four per cent.
 
Interviewed by a Greek television station on September 10, Karamanlis hit out at Pasok’s "vague promises".
 
Papandreou’s Pasok has promised a dynamic foreign policy, a free and high-quality public education for all, a "just redistribution of wealth", a state that operates in favor of the citizens and a new developmental model for the country. Papandreou has said that he will flesh out the details of these key points of his plan on September 12.
 
While New Democracy is fighting its campaign almost solely on the economy, Greek media highlighted new figures showing that unemployment had increased in June 2009 to 8.6 per cent, 1.3 percentage points higher than in June 2008.
 
New Democracy has been in power since 2004 and was re-elected in 2007, but recent months have seen Karamanlis’s government under fire for alleged corruption scandals and accusations of inadequate responses to violent protests by self-proclaimed anarchists and to recent wildfires.