Greek conservative pledges wide government in case of victory

Greek conservative leader Vangelis Meimarakis wound up his election campaign Thursday offering to set up a wide-ranging "national team" government should he win the vote on Sunday.

"My choice is to form a national team with all those who wish to take part," the New Democracy party leader told a crowd of several thousand supporters massed on an Athens square at nightfall.

Polls Thursday predicted a slim lead for his rival, the radical-left Syriza party led by former premier Alexis Tsipras, but with neither party strong enough to form a government outright after the September 20 ballot.

Meimarakis, a bushy eye-browed former lawyer aged 61, has several times held out a hand to Tsipras to form a coalition but has been rebuffed each time.

He made no specific reference to his rival this time, simply adding that "those who are not interested can go their own way."

The ANA news agency said Syriza remained in the lead in most opinions polls Thursday, with two surveys giving the party around a third of the vote and putting it 3.6 and 4 points ahead of New Democracy, while another gave Syriza a slim 0.6 lead and a fourth had Maimarakis' party half a percentage point ahead.

The runner-up to the two mainstream parties is neo-Nazi Golden Dawn, tipped to pick up around six percent of the vote.

Saying he was confident of victory, Maimarakis urged Greek conservatives to vote massively in order to give him a strong mandate for the next four years, when crisis-hit Greece will have to enact a long list of tough economic reforms set by its international creditors.

A rightwing victory would guarantee "the stability and security" of Greece, ending "Syriza's dangerous experiment", he added as he accused the radical party of having caused chaos and of having almost forced it to leave the euro area.

The cash-for-reforms deal agreed by Tsipras with Greece's EU-IMF creditors in July "hits the most vulnerable, people who will lose their pensions and their medicine," he said.

A former postal worker in the crowd, who is now retired and gave his name as Costa, told AFP he had voted for Syriza in the last general election in January but was now ready to switch sides.

"I think New Democracy stands for stability, especially for pensioners. But the party must work with Syriza, they must be united."

Turning to Europe's migrant crisis, Meimarakis said "Athens' squares are flooded with an uncontrolled flow of migrants" because the previous Syriza government had failed to guard Greece's borders.

But he pledged in the future to assist refugees from war and persecution.

"We must all work together on immigration and keep out Golden Dawn," said 60-year-old hotel worker Christos Beiogladis.

Source: MENA