By Harry Papachristou and James Mackenzie
(Reuters) - Greek ministers and policy makers urged parliament on Saturday to do its duty next week and pass a deeply unpopular set of austerity measures international lenders have demanded as the price for staving off bankruptcy.
With Greece teetering on the edge of defaulting on its huge public debt, Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos offered to talk to wavering deputies from the ruling Socialist Party, at least two of whom have said they will oppose the measures in crucial votes on Wednesday and Thursday.
"I believe that the sense of responsibility will ultimately prevail, the God of Greece is great," he told TV station Alter.
Without parliamentary approval for the measures, the European Union (EU) and International Monetary Fund (IMF) have said they will not release a vital 12 billion euro (10.62 billion) loan tranche and the government would run out of cash within days.
On Friday, Prime Minister George Papandreou's already slim majority was further undermined when a deputy from his PASOK party said he would vote against the measures, joining another party rebel who announced his opposition earlier this month.
Papandreou's government has 155 seats in the 300-strong parliament, having seen five defections since it came to power in October 2009 with 160 deputies.
With the economy stuck in its deepest recession since 1974 and youth unemployment running at over 40 percent, the mix of spending cuts, state sell offs and tax hikes demanded by the EU and the IMF has caused bitter resentment among ordinary Greeks.
A two-day general strike is planned next week to coincide with the votes, following a series of protests and rolling strikes at companies including Greece's main electricity group PPC, which is slated for privatisation next year.
Athens accepted a package of 110 billion euros of EU/IMF loans in May 2010 but now needs a second bailout of a similar size to meet its financial obligations until the end of 2014, when it hopes to return to capital markets for funding.
In a statement, Venizelos acknowledged the austerity plan was harsh and imperfect and relied too heavily on tax increases but he said it would give the government time to negotiate a new deal with the EU which could include extra stimulus measures.
"The 12 billion euros of the fifth tranche are absolutely necessary to meet the states' cash needs, which is nothing other than the immediate and vital needs of citizens," he said.
CAMPAIGN
On Saturday, government ministers and policymakers including Bank of Greece governor George Provopoulos gave a series of media interviews to hammer home the message that the measures must pass to give the government some breathing space.
Justice Minister Miltiadis Papaioannou urged his fellow MPs to back the unpopular measures. "They must shut their ears to all the criticism they are hearing and do their duty," he said in an interview on TV station Mega.
Ministers also sought to squash the view, expressed by some deputies, that the vital 12 billion tranche may be released even if the measures are not passed because lenders will not want to risk the financial market turmoil that would follow a default.
"Blackmailing Europe would be playing with fire.. we can't negotiate with kamikaze tactics. It's not responsible to threaten that we'll blow up Europe," Deputy Finance Minister Filippos Sachinidis told the daily Eleftherotypia.
Despite heavy pressure from European leaders including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the conservative New Democracy opposition party has refused to support the package, meaning a handful of votes either way could decide the outcome.
However the Democratic Alliance, a small conservative splinter group with five MPs will decide on how it will vote at the last minute, its leader Dora Bakoyanis told a meeting.
"The stakes are very high, it is a great dilemma," Bakoyanis, said. A former conservative foreign minister, she broke party ranks last year to vote in favour of Greece's first EU/IMF bailout deal but has since criticised the government for bungling its implementation.
Papandreou last week sacrificed his previous finance minister, the unpopular technocrat George Papaconstantinou, in a bid to smooth the passage of the austerity plan but opinion polls still show him trailing the conservative opposition.
On Saturday, a poll by polling agency MARC for newspaper Ethos gave New Democracy leads a 1.4 percentage points lead over PASOK (21.4 pct to 20 pct).
(Writing by James Mackenzie; Editing by Michael Roddy; )
