Tsipras faces clash with Syriza radicals opposed to eurozone bailout for Greece

[brooklynite]

Source: The Guardian

Alexis Tsipras is heading for a showdown with his own party and opposition MPs after the Greek prime minister accepted a third bailout programme that will bring further austerity to the debt-stricken country.

Tsipras, who was locked in fraught negotiations with EU leaders in Brussels throughout the weekend and Monday morning, convened a meeting of government officials in Athens to thrash out a way to convince his radical-leftist Syriza party and its coalition partner to vote through the package by Wednesday.

Determined to keep his party together ahead of an expected onslaught by MPs opposing the outline deal, Tsipras summoned his finance minister, Euclid Tsakalotos, and Nikos Filis, representative of the Syriza parliamentary group, to the Athens meeting, before a gathering of his parliamentary party on Tuesday.

Efforts to win the vote in the national parliament came after Tsipras and Greece’s creditors agreed on the basis for talks on a bailout that will keep the country in the eurozone.

Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jul/13/athens-and-eurozone-agree-bailout-deal-for-greece

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Maybe Syriza should have figured out what Tsipras was going to do before signing on to the referendum in the first place?

[PoliticAverse]

1. He could always put the agreement up for a national referendum. n/t

[daleanime]

2. +1

[bucolic_frolic]

3. The coalition is cooked

The government has fallen, either to foreign banks, or to opposition parties at home.

[Bosonic]

4. SYRIZA MP and minister Nikos Hountis resigns

SYRIZA MP and minister Nikos Hountis resigns

Nikos Hountis, a SYRIZA MP and alternate foreign minister for European affairs, resigned on Monday.

He was the first leftist MP to quit since Greece signed a deal with its creditors in Brussels. Hountis was expected to replace Manolis Glezos, a SYRIZA MEP who announced his resignation last month, as he was the candidate who came second to Glezos in last year’s European Parliament elections.

Hountis himself will be replaced by journalist Giorgos Kyritsis in the Greek Parliament, meaning that SYRIZA’s presence in Parliament will not be affected by the move.

http://www.ekathimerini.com/199463/article/ekathimerini/news/syriza-mp-and-minister-nikos-hountis-resigns

[geek tragedy]

5. SYRIZA is either the most cynical or most naive government on the planet

Pretty clear they were peddling major, major bullshit when they promised to end austerity without having a plan for, you know, paying for stuff.

Were they getting high on their own supply, or did they use that anti-austerity rhetoric as a cynical power grab?

[Igel]

6. I don't think Tsipras knew what he was going to do.

I think that he honestly believed that when faced with people power and solid resistance the others in the EU would say, "Um, well, okay then. Here's the money and we'll forgive a lot of the debt."

I also think he honestly believed that all the "threats", both actual threats and warnings about what would just naturally happen without continued bailing out, were bluster. Somehow everything would just keep on going. There's a lot of that in opposition parties--you don't need to be a grown-up, you just need to nudge and push things in the direction you want. You know that what you want can't possibly be wrong and screw things up. Meanwhile the grown-ups won't let things get out of hand.

[freshwest]

7. How long has this been dragging on, anyway? Been reading fright talk about it for YEARS. n/t

[freshwest]

8. Is this a rhetorical question?

Maybe Syriza should have figured out what Tsipras was going to do before signing on to the referendum in the first place?

How would anyone know how the referendum would play out?

Isn't he still standing between them and the EU ministers or... (insert list of bogeymen)?

I don't see that he did anything they didn't want and couldn't achieve. The problem is reality ends a lot of fantasies.

If the Greek people or their elected party want to be free and independent of EU rules and call the shots, there is a price to be paid. Leaving the Euro would never fix their structural deficits.

Perhaps these elected officials were stalling while waiting to make an escape from Greece?

I read they were going to align with Russia and BRIC anyway. Why this keeps on dragging out sounds like playing both sides of the table. Or playing footsie under the table.

Just speculating.

[Ilios Meows]

9. Of course the assets will be privatised.

Greece is being forced to sell of 50B in assets to a private organization whose chairman is Wolfgang Schäuble, Germany's minister of finance. This is a coup with banks instead of tanks. It's not a matter of Greece not being willing to pay or to reform its public sector. You can't undo 40 years of nepotism and cronyism in 5 months (Syriza was elected in January). If Greece is the first victim of this neo-liberal bloodletting, which country will be next? I'm in Belgium and this is obviously frightening for EU citizens.