1.   He has forced city workers to compete in a bidding process with private companies for traditional government tasks such as repaving highways and collecting trash.

2.   He also advised Margaret Thatcher in the early years of her efforts to improve government efficiency, saving taxpayers millions of pounds through efficient operations of mundane government tasks.

3.   Papandreou has designated no deputy to handle government tasks.

4.   The game plan seems to be to hand more local government tasks to the province while building up trust on both sides, a process likely to take years.

5.   The politics that drives this debate now threatens to undermine what should be a politically neutral government task.