Greece to hold election next month
Print Edition
GREECE yesterday geared up for a snap election next month, with an opinion poll showing leftist party Syriza ahead despite a wave of defections over the country’s massive new bailout.
The state-run ANA news agency said President Prokopis Pavlopoulous had signed a decree dissolving parliament and confirming the widely expected date of September 20 for the country’s fifth election in six years.
A caretaker government appointed by Pavlopoulos to organize the election took office yesterday, with Greece’s top judge as prime minister, replacing Syriza leader Alexis Tsipras who resigned last week.
Tsipras, who rode to power in January on a wave of popular anger over austerity, is seeking re-election to implement more reforms demanded under the new 86 billion euro (US$96 billion) international rescue package.
A poll in leftist newspaper Efimerida ton Syntakton gave Syriza only a slim 3.5 point lead over the conservative New Democracy.
The survey by pollsters ProRata said 23 percent of voters would support Syriza over 19.5 percent for New Democracy.
“Today the great electoral battle begins. The Greek people will give a strong mandate for the present and the future,” Tsipras said in a statement to the Syriza newspaper Avgi.
“Greece cannot turn back ... It will only go forward,” he said.
The survey found that 64 percent of voters disagreed with Tsipras’ decision to step down, and one in two were unimpressed with his promise to ease the austerity measures he ratified.
Syriza was hit by a wave of defections after Tsipras signed up to the third bailout, which critics say is the harshest Greece has adopted so far.
A group of 25 hardline lawmakers split off to form their own party, Popular Unity, and Syriza has also been hit with resignations at local party level.
According to yesterday’s opinion poll, Popular Unity would pick up 3.5 percent of the vote.
“We will do our utmost so that the elections are held in flawless fashion,” Supreme Court head Vassiliki Thanou, Greece’s first female PM, told the inaugural meeting of her interim Cabinet.
Thanou, 65, is known for her critical stance toward austerity. In February she wrote to European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker to warn that the cuts were “annihilating” the Greek people.
Tsipras’ eight months in power have proved a roller coaster for the troubled Greek economy.
As talks broke down in June between Athens and its international creditors and Greeks rejected austerity proposals in a referendum, the European Central Bank restricted its assistance to Greek banks, forcing the government to shut them down.
Earlier this month, the statistics agency said output had picked up in the second quarter of the year, growing by 0.8 percent. The agency yesterday revised the figure to 0.9 percent.
The caretaker government includes former socialist finance minister Nikos Christodoulakis as economy minister, and George Chouliarakis — the main Greek negotiator with the country’s creditors — as finance minister.
Ex-conservative minister Petros Molyviatis will lead the foreign ministry for the third time, while singer Alkistis Protopsalti was named junior minister for tourism, and the head of the National Gallery, Marina Lambraki-Plaka, as junior minister for culture.
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