Greece set to get anti-bailout government
Print Edition
Greek left-wing leader Alexis Tsipras yesterday agreed to team up with a right-wing party to form a new hardline, anti-bailout government determined to face down international lenders and end nearly five years of tough economic measures.
The decisive victory by Tsipras’ Syriza in Sunday’s snap election reignites fears of new financial troubles in the country that set off the regional crisis in 2009. It is also the first time a member of the 19-nation euro zone will be led by parties rejecting German-backed austerity.
Tsipras’ resounding victory is likely to empower Europe’s fringe parties, including other anti-austerity movements across the region's economically-depressed southern rim. The trouncing of conservative Prime Minister Antonis Samaras represents a defeat of Europe’s middle-ground political guard, which has dallied on a growth-versus-budget discipline debate for five years while voters suffered.
Within hours of victory on a campaign of “Hope is coming!,” the 40-year-old Tsipras sealed a coalition deal with the small Independent Greeks party which also opposes Greece's EU/IMF aid program.
Syriza won 149 seats in the 300-seat parliament, leaving it just two seats short of an outright majority and in need of a coalition partner. The Independent Greeks won 13 seats.
“From this moment there is a government in the country. The Independent Greeks give a vote of confidence in Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras. There is an agreement in principle,” the smaller party’s leader Panos Kammenos said after talks with Tsipras.
The alliance is an unusual one between parties on the opposite end of the political spectrum brought together by a mutual hatred of the 240-billion-euro bailout program keeping Greece afloat at the price of budget cuts.
The Independent Greeks and Syriza are at odds on many social issues such as illegal immigration, raising the prospect of tensions within a coalition united by its opposition to the international bailout.
An alliance between the two sides would suggest a hardline stance against Greece’s creditors, who have dismissed Tsipras’s demands for a debt writeoff and insisted the country stay on the path of reforms and austerity to get its finances back on track.
Tsipras is expected to announce his cabinet today.
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