Greece’s lawmakers started to debate the first set of 3. bailout “prior actions” to be voted in the Parliament later today. The voting is the toughest political challenge for Syriza and Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras who most likely see his parliamentary majority decreasing.
One after the other, SYRIZA Ministers and lawmakers have open their cards and took position in favor or against the 3. bailout agreement with the EURO creditors.
Arriving at the Parliament, Energy Minister Panagiotis Lafazanis stated that he will not vote in favor of the 3. bailout and added that he does not intend to resign.
“I will not vote for the 3. bailout. Greece cannot go forward with bailouts. The bailouts destroy the country. There are alternative options,” Lafazanis told reporters.
Panagiotis Lazafanis is the leader of Left Platform fraction within the Syriza. In an article uploaded on its website Iskra, the Left Platform proposes its alternative option to 3. bailout, with return to Drachma and a bridge financing with €22 billion from the Bank of Greece reserves for the payment of wages and pensions, until the new currency is introduced.
While Left Platform MPs have taken the decision to down vote the “prior actions” it is not clear yet if all of them will stick to the decision. According to latest information coming form the Parliament, the LP is not expected to vote ‘en block’.
There are also other SYRIZA MPs who disagree with the 3. bailout even if they do not belong to Left Platform.
Alternate Finance Minister Nandia Valavani sent her resignation as member of the cabinet to PM Tsipras already on Monday morning, the news came out today. In her letter to Tsipras, she stressed that “the 3. bailout is not a viable solution.” She told reporters outside the Parliament “I will not vote for this.” She is still SYRIZA MP, it is not clear if she will return her seat to SYRIZA after the voting.
Also Parliament Speaker Zoi Konstantopoulou (SYRIZA) stated that she will not vote in favor.
Ex FinMin Yanis Varoufakis described the Brussels agreement as “modern Versailles Treaty” but he did not disclose his vote intention.
Greek media estimate that 30-40 SYRIZA MPs will down vote the 3. bailout. this will force PM Tsipras to take political initiative. However SYRIZA is not one-man party like New Democracy and PASOK, and it needs the decisions of its Central Committee to expel these MPs from the party. According to SYRIZA statute, its MPs have to resign and return their seat to the party if they disagree with the policies. However, the Left Platform lawmakers have said so far that they would not resign.
With the heavy loss of 30-40 MPs not supporting his policies, the PM may call early elections, get away with just a government reshuffle or proceed with the formation of a national unity government.
For the time being, Parliamentary groups of SYRIZA and New Democracy are still holding their meeting. Tsipras’ coalition partner ANEL are expected to vote in favor without leakages of NO-sayers. To Potami and PASOK will support the government as well as ND. Eurosceptics KKE and Golden Dawn will down vote the bill.
Due to Euro-leaders’ Brussels Agreement, the government is obliged to vote for the first set of the “prior actions” on July 15th 2015.
The government is rushing to have the voting result before midnight. The plenary session is scheduled to start at 5 pm, the roll call voting to start at 10:30 pm the latest, the result to be out before midnight.
More analysis on Tsipras’ political options you can read in KTG’s Tsipras’ next battle: Government majority and rebels in his own party
PS voting with eyes fixed on the clock…
Poemos wrote january the 25 ,when tsipras got elected :
” At last the Greeks will have a Greek Government , not an envoy of Angela Merkel “.
The tweet is curious since it does encapsute the left mindset.
The Right Governments that did apply austerity were seen as non patriotic, as envoys of the German Dictator.
People could not understand that there were indigenous problems (at least in Greece in Portugal ).
Not everything was the fault of the foreigner.
What is most sad in old syriza and podemos, is that they see the problem through nationalist , xenophobic googles.
This is the return to the most backward nationalism of the 30s
.
Mind your words: nationalism does not need to be backward and even less xenophobia.
It’s interesting that in his interview yesterday Tsipras acknowledged that there are some reforms that Greece should have introduced regardless of the foreigners (e.g., make the pension system sustainable by preventing early retirement). However, it seems it still takes foreigners’ “knife on his neck” to push such reforms through.
Can you quote this sentence with the “foreigners”? In Greek please!
Sorry, this is above and beyond my knowledge of Greek 🙂 Can you quote in Greek Tsipras’s sentence, when he was talking about accepting the agreement with “knife at his neck”? Are you implying that he was referring to members of the Greek delegation holding that knife, rather than foreigners?
Of course, this guy read excerpts from an interview, not in Greek — maybe in Bulgarian, or German, or Croatian… He is quite happy to quote back at Greeks, these so-called “facts”. This is the arrogance of the foreign trolls — just full of it.
As one point in the “agreement” is to cancel all the laws that were made the last 5 months without Troika approval it’s Troika who is xenophobe as one law was about gaining 2nd generation “migrant” kids citizenship easier; beside that the Troika was constantly lying about that the government made no reforms as this is a reform.
I guess what you don’t understand is that some countries were fighting against German occupation and some not and now German Goebbels-Media disorientate this as “nationalism”, the same media that is hunting against Greeks like they did in Germany against Jews.
I did not realize the Left Platform named their website Iskra — after the Russian political newspaper started by Lenin in 1900. These people certainly follow powerful ideas and ideals, which led to the bankruptcy of the Soviet Union and the rest of the communist states in Europe…
The masters also want all laws cancelled the government introduced without troika-institutions’ approval and Dieselblümchen wants ERT to be killed again.
The levels of economic pain and dysfunctional borrowing set to be inflicted on Greece mean that at some point in the next 12-18 months there is a chance that centrist 20-30% of public opinion will flip to a policy of controlled, or maybe temporary exit from the Eurozone. The only question then is: which party will offer a convincing narrative and lead it.
Truth is this deal will be a catastrophe, nobody believes in it to start with, both in Greece or abroad. It is bound to fail and take with it all the ones that are tied to it.
That is why it is so decisive that Syriza rejects this and distances itself from this sinking ship and presents an alternative which includes Grexit one way or the other…
“The only question then is: which party will offer a convincing narrative and lead it.”
Paul Mason hits the nail in the head with this one! Finally someone understands the obvious! It better be a Syriza, purged of the capitulacionist traitors who want the party to implement a failed salvage neo-liberal deal. If Syriza cannot purge itself, than I hope, for the best of all of us(in Greece and beyond), that its healthier parts can make a decisive break and lead the alternative (the likely alternative to this are the Nazis or the Military).
Fortunately, there are important signs from the ground pointing that Syriza will be able to re-born from the ashes, not as a minion of the Imperial EU, but has a purged and Healthy party of the resistance!
Put your signature under the unconditionnal surrender without discussions. It is a waste of time. If things go wrong later, put the blame on the European technocrats that have a solution in abstracto for all the problems the Greek governments could not solve in concreto.
I am from Holland and because I don’t want to rely on the media of my own country I look to other sites. I read from Romania (Greece could learn from the anti-corruption there), Moldova and Ukraine.
This is what Ukraine (which is in a much more difficult position, lower wager, 1 million IDP’s (internal displaced persons)) says about Greece:
“It’s entirely different cases,” Yatsenyuk said. “Because we are making our job. And we do not blackmail anyone. We do understand that the world is to support Ukraine only … if we support ourselves, if we show the real progress on the reform agenda. So it’s up to us.”
did ukraine get the IMF bailout?
Haircut 40% and they have social welfare and Greece not
So telling that of all the examples you can have chosen, you took a nostalgic of the nazi order. Do you guys really want to recreate the Reich?
Oh right, I am pretty sure the Dutch would be sooo happy for the Reich to return, because they certainly were such vivid supporters of Germany in WWII, right?
Seriously though, have you nothing better than throwing around phrases that call someone “Reich-supporter” just because they disagree with the Greek position? The commenter is dutch, no doubt at least some of their family suffered under the Third Reich and you dare to claim that they would like the return of that?
I can’t even begin to imagine how full of themselves some Greeks have to be for the “courageous and honorable resistance” some of their ancestors mustered, as if no other people in Europe did their best to resist the Reich.
Face it just because people disagree with Greece does not make them supporters of a Fourth Reich, afterall, 15 FMs supported the proposal out of 18, or do you really want to claim that all 15 are supporters of some sort of secret german uberplan to grab control of europe and all of them are in on it?
The Dutch didn’t put up much resistance to the Nazis, so I don’t get your point.
And the accusation of a Fourth Reich is not because of “disagreement with the Greek position”. It is because the entire world disagrees with the German position, apart from the little countries nearby (mostly ex-communist). Most of the world, and especially in the UK, is seeing the german behaviour as sadistic and brutal — as in the Third Reich. No, it is not about opinions — it is about how the Germans behave when they have power.
We have seen this before, and the world will not tolerate it again. You Krauts need to wake up, before it is too late.
Ah yes, the entire world disagrees with Germany, that’s why the world gallantly rushed to the defense of Greece. Oh wait.
The same happened with you Krauts in 1939. It’s not my fault if you are too stupid to grasp reality or learn from your own terrible mistakes.
Check history “Europabank Wien” “Eurogulden” “Reichshauptstadt Germania” “Reichskassenschein” Gustav Schlotterer’s “Paneuropa”
Nazis were planning it all already except from their money-union that existed in 21 states.
Being Dutsch doesn’t make him a nazi nostalgic. Praising the Ukrainien government certainly does. Do you not see the difference?
P.: for the record, I’m not a Greek citizen
Under the tag “korruption” on griechenland-blog.gr you can learn about anti-corruption that is not reported by your Goebbels-Media
The malakas PM of Ukraine appeared today in London, and told the BBC cameras that Greece can learn from the experience of Ukraine (!!!???) where austerity has worked very well. LOLOLOLLLLL
Of course, these former communist bloc ***lickers are trying to get EU support in their arguments with Russia. They will say anything to curry favour, completely without principles or credibility. Just scum.
To all replies, you completely confirm your image. And that is not an image in which you create solidarity feelings in the rest of Europe.
The only solidarity in Europe at this time is between fascist interests. Greece is not part of that, and never had strong fascism — not even in the 1930s. The only genuine fascism in Greece was that of the Nazis when they occupied Greece.
So, you can stuff your fake “solidarity”: it does not exist.