Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras again reiterated his government’ s belief that a first review of the Greek program (third bailout) can be achieved by Orthodox Easter (May 1), which would mean at least eight days after the previous target of April 22.
Speaking on the state-run broadcaster, Tsipras’ comments come as his top economic ministers are in Washington D.C. to jumpstart negotiations with institutional creditors.
Failure to achieve the first review would mean an interruption in the Greek state’s financing from institutional lenders – Commission, ECB, ESM and IMF – to cover its borrowing needs, given that the country remains essentially excluded from private sovereign lending channels. April 22 is the date of a scheduled Eurogroup meeting, a much-cited previous target for concluding the review.
Tsipras echoed other top government ministers in repeating that Athens has met conditions of last July’s third memorandum – signed after a “No” referendum result on July 5, 2015 – and that the deal did not foresee cuts in primary pensions.
Moreover, he pointed to a visit by Pope Francis to the eastern Aegean island of Lesvos (Lesbos) on Saturday as proof that the recession-battered and debt-laden country is “not isolated”.
Francis was joined by Ecumenical Patriarch Vartholomeos (Bartholomew) and Church of Greece Archbishop Ieronymos, as well as Tsipras, on the island as a show of solidarity to Mideast war refugees arriving there from Turkey, as well as towards Greece in dealing with the refugee crisis.
In a related development, Tsipras’ office angrily dismissed press reports in Athens over the weekend claiming that the Greek prime minister threatened to resign if lenders’ – primarily the IMF – objections were not overcome and a first review achieved.
High-ranking sources reminded that snap elections were held in September – the third time Greek voters went to the polls in 2015.
The Sunday weekly RealNews bannered a front-page headline over the weekend claiming that Tsipras threatened to resign during a hastily arranged meeting last week in Paris with French President Francois Hollande. The paper said Tsipras made the same statement in a meeting with EP President Martin Schulz in Strasbourg, France a day later.
Opposition criticism of the leftist government’s latest handling of negotiations with institutional creditors reached a fever pitch over the past week, with political parties, business groups and analysts warning of "dark clouds" again gathering over the country's finances and economy.
PASOK leader Fofi Gennimata, among others, told a television news program on Sunday that the country can ill-afford to return to the situation it endured last summer, while charging that Tsipras has “given away everything … and handed a huge bill to the Greek people, including a (rumored new) VAT rate of 24 percent”.
Latest opinion poll result
The latest opinion poll to be released this week shows main opposition New Democracy leading ruling SYRIZA by 4.4 percentage points
The poll, conducted by the Kapa Research firm and commissioned by the weekly “Vima”, also shows a majority of respondents as unhappy with the government’s negotiations.
Specifically, SYRIZA was preferred by 18.4 percent of respondents – which is extrapolated to 27 percent when calculating the undecided vote. ND is preferred by 21.4 percent of respondents, which is recalculated at 31.4 percent.
Far behind are PASOK-DIMAR (6 and 8.7 percent, respectively), Golden Dawn (5.4 and 8 percent), the Communist Party (4.9 and 7.2 percent) and the Union of Centrists (2.6 and 3.8 percent).
If taking into account the recalculation based on undecided respondents, the populist-rightist Independent Greeks’ party (AN.EL) would get 3.7 percent and again enter Parliament. AN.EL is the coalition partner for leftist SYRIZA.
