Greek elections loom as parties dig in heels
Source: Agencies |
May 13, 2012, Sunday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
GREECE'S president summoned party leaders yesterday for one final attempt to avert new elections, but the effort looked doomed to fail after politicians deeply divided over austerity plans said they would stick to their guns.
Greece's political landscape is in disarray a week after an election left parliament almost equally divided between parties backing and opposing an EU/IMF bailout that keeps Athens afloat in return for pledges of deep spending cuts and tax hikes.
If President Karolos Papoulias fails in a final attempt to persuade leaders to form a coalition, he will have to call a new vote in June. Opinion polls predict the balance of power would tip decisively toward the bailout's radical leftist opponents, potentially jeopardizing Greece's membership in the euro zone.
Papoulias has called the leaders of the three biggest parties for coalition talks today after Socialist leader Evangelos Venizelos became the third and last of them to acknowledge he had failed to assemble a coalition.
Without a government to negotiate a new aid tranche from the EU and IMF, Greece risks bankruptcy in weeks and - as European leaders now openly acknowledge - potential ejection from the common currency.
Efforts to put together a government failed because of disagreement over the bailout. Party officials said yesterday they would not change their stances.
"There is no change (to our position)," said Panos Skourletis, a spokesman for the anti-bailout Left Coalition SYRIZA party, which placed second on Sunday and has since seen its popularity increase as anti-bailout voters rally around its 37-year-old leader, Alexis Tsipras.
Tsipras has the most to gain from a new vote. If, as polls predict, SYRIZA overtakes the conservatives to place first, it would be awarded an extra 50 seats in the 300-seat house, making the former student activist - little known outside Greece just weeks ago - into the country's pre-eminent politician.
Tsipras says the bailout deal must be torn up, though he also says he wants to keep the euro, a position seen in Brussels as untenable without the bailout.
The prospect of Greece leaving the euro was once seen as potentially devastating for the continent's financial system, but is now seen as more manageable as banks wrote off much of their Greek debt this year.
Irish central bank chief and European Central Bank policymaker Patrick Honohan said that a Greek exit would damage confidence in the euro zone but need not be fatal. Germany opened the door yesterday to additional measures to promote growth in Greece, but said any such steps would still depend on Greece carrying out its agreed reforms.
Greece's political landscape is in disarray a week after an election left parliament almost equally divided between parties backing and opposing an EU/IMF bailout that keeps Athens afloat in return for pledges of deep spending cuts and tax hikes.
If President Karolos Papoulias fails in a final attempt to persuade leaders to form a coalition, he will have to call a new vote in June. Opinion polls predict the balance of power would tip decisively toward the bailout's radical leftist opponents, potentially jeopardizing Greece's membership in the euro zone.
Papoulias has called the leaders of the three biggest parties for coalition talks today after Socialist leader Evangelos Venizelos became the third and last of them to acknowledge he had failed to assemble a coalition.
Without a government to negotiate a new aid tranche from the EU and IMF, Greece risks bankruptcy in weeks and - as European leaders now openly acknowledge - potential ejection from the common currency.
Efforts to put together a government failed because of disagreement over the bailout. Party officials said yesterday they would not change their stances.
"There is no change (to our position)," said Panos Skourletis, a spokesman for the anti-bailout Left Coalition SYRIZA party, which placed second on Sunday and has since seen its popularity increase as anti-bailout voters rally around its 37-year-old leader, Alexis Tsipras.
Tsipras has the most to gain from a new vote. If, as polls predict, SYRIZA overtakes the conservatives to place first, it would be awarded an extra 50 seats in the 300-seat house, making the former student activist - little known outside Greece just weeks ago - into the country's pre-eminent politician.
Tsipras says the bailout deal must be torn up, though he also says he wants to keep the euro, a position seen in Brussels as untenable without the bailout.
The prospect of Greece leaving the euro was once seen as potentially devastating for the continent's financial system, but is now seen as more manageable as banks wrote off much of their Greek debt this year.
Irish central bank chief and European Central Bank policymaker Patrick Honohan said that a Greek exit would damage confidence in the euro zone but need not be fatal. Germany opened the door yesterday to additional measures to promote growth in Greece, but said any such steps would still depend on Greece carrying out its agreed reforms.
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