ATHENS, Aug 17 (Reuters) – A Greek minister gave on Monday
the strongest indication yet that the government will call a
confidence vote following a rebellion among lawmakers from the
ruling Syriza party over the country’s new bailout deal.
Energy Minister Panos Skourletis described such a
parliamentary vote as “self-evident” following Friday’s
rebellion when almost a third of Syriza deputies abstained or
voted against the agreement.
With Syriza’s left wing showing little sign of returning to
the party fold, Skourletis also alluded to possible early
elections should Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras lose a confidence
motion. Tsipras had to rely on opposition support to get the
bailout deal though parliament.
Greece’s political turmoil has raised uncertainty over how
the government might implement the bailout deal, which demands
profound economic reform and tough austerity policies, without a
workable majority.
The government has said its priority is to secure a start to
funding from international creditors under the bailout
programme, Greece’s third in five years, so that Athens can make
a 3.2 billion euro debt repayment to the European Central Bank
on Thursday.
However, asked on Skai television about the possibility of
a parliamentary confidence vote after this, Skourletis said: “I
consider it self-evident after the deep wound in Syriza’s
parliamentary group for there to be such a move.”
Tsipras has said he will call a Syriza congress after the
summer to iron out the party’s differences. But Skourletis
raised the possibility of early polls should Tsipras fail in a
confidence vote.
“If we go to elections soon, in three or four weeks if this
option is chosen, obviously a party congress cannot be
fruitful,” he said.
Tsipras fired his last energy minister Panagiotis Lafazanis
for joining a previous rebellion. Lafazanis now leads Syriza
members who oppose the tough conditions set by the euro zone and
IMF that Tsipras had to accept in return for the 86 billion
euros ($95.5 billion) in loans.
Last week Lafazanis took a step toward breaking away from
Syriza, itself a coalition of the radical left, by calling for a
new anti-bailout movement.
The chances that the hard left wing will relent and rally
behind Tsipras in a confidence vote look slim.
“The bailout cannot be a unifying basis for Syriza,” Stathis
Leoutsakos, a lawmaker who joined the rebellion told Skai TV.
“The bailout cannot be the programme of Syriza, it falls outside
its values, these are incompatible notions.”
OPPOSITION TO END SUPPORT
On Sunday, Greece’s socialist PASOK party joined the main
conservative opposition in saying it would not back Tsipras in
any confidence vote.
PASOK made clear that while it had backed the government
over the bailout for the sake of saving Greece from financial
ruin, that support would not continue.
The party blamed Tsipras and Panos Kammenos, who leads the
minority partner in the coalition government, for the fact that
Greece had to take yet another bailout.
“The government has signed the third and most onerous
bailout. All the negative consequences for the country and its
citizens bear the signatures of Mr Tsipras and Mr Kammenos,” the
party said in a statement. “We have no confidence in the
Tsipras-Kammenos government and of course will not give it if we
are asked.”
PASOK, once the dominant force on the Greek left, now has
just 13 members in the 300 seat parliament but Tsipras may need
all the support he can get. Crucially, it did not say whether it
would vote against the government, or merely abstain.
On Friday, support for the government from within its own
coalition parties fell below 120 votes, the minimum needed to
survive a confidence vote if some others abstain.
The conservative New Democracy, which has 76 seats, has also
said it would not back the government, which won power in
January on promises to reverse austerity policies.
Opinion polls show Tsipras remains popular, even though he
presided over the closure of banks for three weeks, the
imposition of capital controls and a near brush with financial
collapse. This has raised doubts about how much the opposition
parties may want to force new elections.
Skourletis said that if Syriza opts for snap polls, the
party would aim for an absolute majority.
“Based on my feeling of how things stand, … I think such a
goal is attainable,” he said, playing down the possibility of
post-election collaboration with the likes of New Democracy,
PASOK and Potami, a pro-European centrist party.
($1 = 0.9011 euros)
(Writing by David Stamp; Editing by Andrew Heavens and John
Stonestreet)