Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras postponed for next week his decision to ask parliament for a vote of confidence or go for snap elections immediately.
In both cases elections are unavoidable since the prime minister has “lost” almost one third of his party who criticize him strongly for signing Greece’s third bailout agreement full of required austerity measures. At the same time, the opposition parties that supported him in voting for the bailout deal are now stating that they will not support him any further.
Therefore, elections are unavoidable. However, Tsipras is delaying his decision because he doesn’t want to give Europe the impression that Greece is in a period of political uncertainty that might undermine the implementation of the reforms required in exchange for further financial assistance.
It is important that the Greek government must implement the required reforms between now and October, when the first review of the program is due and Athens and creditors will sit down again at the negotiating table to discuss debt restructuring. Elections in September would mean that the Greek government is not serious about implementing the required reforms.
Tsipras wants to complete the agreement with the European Stability Mechanism and get the first disbursement of 13 billion euros. That can be completed by Friday.
At the moment the most likely move for Tsipras is to close the parliament for the summer and move the vote of the reforms to the two summer sessions. This way he can appoint lawmakers of his trust to man the summer sessions and pass the controversial bills.
Government spokesperson Olga Gerovasili confirmed the delay of the prime minister’s decision by saying that “within the next 10 days all decisions should have been made so that there is a guide on the table that will lead us to the first [bailout] review.”
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