Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras spoke on the telephone with President of the Republic Prokopis Pavlopoulos and asked for a meeting between all party leaders as soon as possible.
Tsipras is in Israel on official visit, while the Greek president is in Rome for the same reason. The two officials will be returning to Greece on Thursday night and Friday respectively. The urgency of the call has generated suspicion among opposition parties.
For the past few days, the Greek prime minister has announced that he wants political dialogue with all party leaders and expects a parliament consensus on the serious issues that arise from the implementation of the reforms required by the bailout program.
The SYRIZA-ANEL coalition has come out scathed from the last vote of required reforms in parliament. The coalition lost two of the 155 votes, thereby now they are only three votes away from losing the majority on the forthcoming crucial ballots.
There are harsh reforms ahead that Greek society is already opposed to. The security fund reform, farmers taxation and restructure of labor relations are the main ones. When these reforms are tabled in parliament, the coalition will be greatly challenged. Tsipras needs the support of other parties as well.
New Democracy has reacted against the call. Candidate for party presidency Adonis Georgiadis said that this is a cunning move on behalf of Tsipras because he knows that the main opposition party is headless at the moment.
PASOK is reluctantly close to accepting the call for a dialogue. Party chief Fofi Gennimata said that siting down with Tsipras to discuss the issues at hand does not mean that PASOK will give the coalition carte blanche to implement their policies.
Potami leader Stavros Theodorakis said he is willing to sit down and talk with the prime minister, but would not agree to vote on the new reforms. He noted though that he doesn’t trust Tsipras at all.
Centrists Union leader Vasilis Leventis said that Tsipras wants consensus but he only does so in order to remain in power. Leventis stressed that he is in favor of an all-party government instead.
Greek Communist Party General Secretary Dimitris Koutsoumbas refused outright to participate in such a meeting.
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