By G. Kampourakis
An off-the-record briefing by top finance ministry officials on Wednesday revealed that the ministry's leadership considers the goal for concluding the third review of the current bailout to be mid January 2018.
The 2018 date comes after high-profile comments by the Greek prime minister and other top Cabinet members of a conclusion before 2017 ends.
Another strategic "difference" between the finance ministry and the prime minister's office is the fact that the former is pushing for a precautionary credit line to be extended to Greece when the third bailout ends in August 2018.
Conversely, Tsipras traveled to a Thessaloniki trade exhibition over the weekend and repeated, in celebratory tones, that the country will achieve a "clean exit" from the bailout era next August, essentially framing the beleaguered coalition government's main "selling point" in any coming election.
Trailing in all mainstream opinion polls and with little or no "political capital" left at its disposal, delays in the third review - similar to the ones experienced for the second review - will doom even the remote possibility of a "clean exit" - and what the Tsipras government believes is its last "ace in the hole" in terms of reversing its waning popularity and prospects.
On the tactical level, the finance ministry's leadership continues to bristle when Tsipras and other top ministers publicly say the third review should be a "cakewalk", as previous experience refers to an extremely tasking process, one made only harder with recent "hiccups", such as the Greek state's feud with the Canadian mining multinational Eldorado Gold, other stalled privatizations.
