Greek leftists embark on coalition talks

The head of Greece\\\’s radical left-wing Syriza party Alexis Tsipras on Tuesday said that he will try to form a coalition government within the next three days.

 

"The public verdict has clearly nullified the loan agreement and (pledges) sent to Europe and the IMF," Alexis Tsipras said in a televised address.

 

 

The country\\\’s youngest political leader at 37, Tsipras has been given three days to form a government by the head of state, President Carolos Papoulias, after a similar attempt by the first-ranked conservative New Democracy party failed.

 

General elections on Sunday did not produce a clear winner but gave an overwhelming boost to Syriza which now has 52 deputies in parliament, making it the second biggest party.

 

The main parties that have pledged to continue deficit-cutting reforms, New Democracy and socialist Pasok, now only send a combined 149 MPs to the 300-seat parliament, not enough for a re-run of the outgoing coalition led by technocrat Lucas Papademos.

 

Tsipras called on the leaders of Pasok and New Democracy to renege on their pledges to international creditors, vowing to form an anti-austerity coalition with other leftist parties and abolish a spate of labour laws demanded by Greece\\\’s creditors to improve competitiveness.

 

"Citizens have crushingly voted against the barbaric policy of loan agreements. They put an end to plans for 77 new austerity measures in June, plans to lay off 150,000 civil servants, and to additional measures worth 11.5 billion euros ($15 billion)," he said in his address.

 

"This was a mature, conscious political choice," he said.

 

Even assuming that Syriza and other anti-bailout parties could overcome their gaping differences, they can only muster 151 votes, enough for just a razor-thin majority in parliament.

 

The Communist party, which has 26 seats, refused to cooperate on Tuesday.

 

"Everything points to new elections in June," said the pro-conservative Eleftheros Typos daily.

 

However, some constitutional experts have argued that a government could theoretically be backed by just 120 lawmakers depending on the number of deputies present on the day of the confidence vote in parliament.

 

Tsipras, who will probably not seek the prime minister\\\’s post for himself, said that banks should be placed under "national control" and a "moratorium" applied on loan repayments.

 

He also called for an international accounting committee to be formed to investigate how much of Greece\\\’s debt is "odious".

 

"The crisis is not a Greek particularity," he said.

 

Fotis Kouvelis, head of the smaller Democratic Left party that is mostly composed of former Syriza cadres and lawmakers, also said a new government should disengage itself from the loan agreement.

 

Tsipras will later see former socialist minister Louka Katseli, who formed a splinter party in March after opposing the latest round of austerity cuts.

 

Syriza spokesman Panos Skourletis said the party would seek an understanding with Greece\\\’s EU peers on making the country\\\’s huge debt of over 350 billion euros sustainable.

 

"We need to find a European solution on the debt after setting the (loan agreement) aside," he told Flash Radio.

 

A new government has to be formed by May 17 or new elections will be called.

 

The voters\\\’ verdict in Greece has alarmed markets.

 

The Athens stock exchange lost 3.77 percent in afternoon trading after shedding another 6.67 percent on Monday..

 

And Greece\\\’s cost of borrowing jumped on Tuesday as it sought to raise 1.3 billion euros ($1.7 billionj) in a sale of six-month treasury bills.

 

It offered a return of 4.69 percent to investors, up from 4.55 percent at the last equivalent sale on April 10.

 

The only option to forestall new elections, noted pro-socialist Ethnos daily, is for Syriza and the smaller Democratic Left party to settle on a joint candidate for prime minister which the third-seeded socialist Pasok party could support.

 

The political developments in Greece and also France, after presidential elections there on Sunday, stoked anxiety about the fate of the EU\\\’s tough fiscal pact adopted in March to end the eurozone\\\’s crippling debt crisis.

 

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the chief proponent of austerity as the main way out of the crisis, said Monday it was "of utmost importance" that Greece stuck to its reform path, while conceding this was "difficult".

 

The country, in its fifth year of recession with unemployment at 20 percent, is committed under the previous government to finding by June another 11.5 billion euros in savings over the next two years.