Greek election campaign heats up

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Greece's election campaign warmed up on Thursday as the conservatives released a new alarmist campaign ad and police sought a neo-Nazi MP over an assault of two female lawmakers live on TV.

Ten days before elections that could herald Greece's exit from the eurozone, a television advert from the New Democracy party set in the future showed school children asking their teacher why they were no longer in the currency zone.

"Greece needs a party that is responsible," the advert concludes.

It forms part of New Democracy leader Antonis Samaras's attempt to prevent a repeat of the last elections on May 6 when a large majority of voters supported parties opposed to more austerity measures.

The cuts, which have involved slashing pensions and wages, are the price for two huge international bailouts from the International Monetary Fund and European insitutions that have kept the heavily endebted country solvent.

Official figures released on Thursday showed the unemployment rate hitting 21.9 percent of the workforce in March. The economy is forecast to shrink sharply in 2012 for the fifth year running.

The uncertainty and prospect of a eurozone exit has made life extremely difficult for Greek companies, many of which are forced to pay up front for imports instead of on credit.

Shortages of medicines have already been reported.

Many of the parties that won such huge support last month, most notably the second-placed Syriza leftists, want to renegotiate or even tear up the terms of the bailouts.

If that happens, the flow of funds will stop, meaning the Greek Treasury will run out of money and default on its debts, which would likely lead to an exit from the eurozone.

The fear is that in setting such a precedent, other 'periphery' eurozone members with similar problems to Greece may also be forced out, not the least of which could be Spain, the area's fourth-largest economy, which is struggling to support its banks.

Germany, the eurozone's main paymaster, has however stood firm in its position that austerity is the only solution to the crisis.

It has rejected growing pressure to prioritise growth and resisted calls from other eurozone countries to raise debt funding by issuing joint eurobonds.

Alexis Tsipras, the youthful head of Syriza -- running neck-and-neck in opinion polls with New Democracy -- has said that despite rejecting more cuts he wants to stay in the euro.

On Wednesday he warned that if Greece and other European nations continued on the path of austerity, "the results will be catastrophic for societies, the global economy and also for the euro."

New Democracy and Pasok, the main socialist party, also want the IMF and the EU to cut Greece more slack, but they have sought to portray Tsipras as immature and his campaign promises as half-baked.

Another of the parties that did well on May 6 was Chryssi Avgi (Golden Dawn), a neo-Nazi party whose leader Nikos Michaloliakos has said there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz and has whipped up anti-immigrant feeling.

Six days after two of its MPs were briefly detained by police over an assault on a Pakistani man, television images showed its spokesman and lawmaker Ilias Kasidiaris assaulting two leftist MPs during a live debate on Thursday.

Athens prosecutors have ordered the arrest of the MP, Ilias Kasidiaris, for alleged attempted grievous bodily harm after the images showed him hitting female communist lawmaker Liana Kanelli three times in the face.

The incident, which can be seen at http://tinyurl.com/c425jfl [2], shows Kasidiaris throwing a glass of water at Rena Dourou from the leftist Syriza party before slapping and punching Kanelli.

Kasidiaris later phoned the television channel, accusing Kanelli of having assaulted him first and saying that the channel had doctored the images.

Kasidiaris is also involved in a court case due to resume Monday over a brutal 2007 mugging.