Speculation by pundits and the media was rife in Athens on Sunday over a forthcoming Cabinet reshuffle by increasingly beleaguered Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsirpas, who returned from an EU summit in Brussels late last week emptied-handed in terms of specific deadlines and measures for debt relief.
According to the latest political scenario making the press rounds in the Greek capital, Tsipras will proceed with a reshuffle before a completion of ongoing negotiations with creditors over a second review of the Greek program (third bailout) and before a crucial ruling by the Council of State (Cos) on the constitutionality of a controversial law on broadcast licenses.
Most speculation converged on a forecast that both of the ministers overseeing the specific issues – negotiations with creditors and broadcast licenses – will remain in their seats. The two ministers, respectively, are FinMin Euclid Tsakalotos, a UK-based academic turned nascent Greek politician, and Nikos Pappas, one of Tsipras’ oldest and closest associates.
Pappas’ stature, however, both within the government and the ruling leftist SYRIZA party, would be tarnished if the CoS throws out the broadcast license law, which is unofficially referred to as the “Pappas law”.
Another seemingly “untouchable” minister in the Tsipras Cabinet at present is Labor Minister Giorgos Katrougalos, who is the Greek side’s chief negotiator on a wide variety of issues with creditors, all mostly revolving around the latter's demand to liberalize Greece’s labor sector.
Conversely, Energy Minister Panos Skourletis is the odds-on-favorite to be replaced, as the hard left-leaning minister is viewed as unwilling to promote memorandum-mandated privatizations in the energy sector, given his publicly aired opposition on ideological grounds.
