GREECE’S NEW finance minister, Filippos Sachinidis, is typical of the new breed of politician that crisis has brought to the fore. A macroeconomist who studied at Queens College in New York and lectured at Manchester University, where he earned his doctorate before going into politics, the 49-year-old Socialist Pasok MP is a reform-minded moderniser, a low-profile politician with a technocratic approach.
Since 2009, with the elevation to power of Pasok under former prime minister George Papandreou, the deputy finance minister has played a pivotal role in running Greece’s economy ministry. Behind the front players, he has kept the government department going at a time when bankruptcy never seemed far away for the nation at the centre of Europe’s debt crisis.
His promotion yesterday to the top job was in part recognition for his hard work. “Everyone in government thought it was right that he should be acknowledged for his efforts,” said one official. “And he knows the brief. He’s the man best qualified for the position.”
Sachinidis hails from Larissa, an agricultural area in central Greece, and, unlike his predecessor, Evangelos Venizelos, he has had little international exposure. But in outlook he is stridently unprovincial.
The politician, who has also worked in the banking sector, is among the few socialist cadres who strongly believe that if Greece had not been forced to sign up to stringent reforms as a condition of its bailout, it would have had to impose them on itself as a matter of survival.
“He is one of the few who truly believe that the old strategy of development using funds borrowed from abroad is outdated,” said another government source. “He works on the concept that politicians need to do much more with much less money.” With Greece gearing up for parliamentary elections possibly as early as April 29th, Sachinidis has his work cut out: his first task will be to oversee yet more “horizontal cuts” in government expenditure by slashing ministerial budgets – a reform agreed by Athens in return for €130 billion in rescue funds from the EU and IMF, its second bailout in as many years.
In the countdown to the poll, the new finance minister will also have to ensure that reforms continue to be implemented.
“Traditionally, in electoral periods revenues fall and costs rise, but there’s no room for that today,” said a government official. “Sachinidis’s biggest challenge will be to ensure that everything we have agreed to with our lenders goes ahead as planned.” – (Guardian service)