TENSE NEGOTIATIONS on the formation of a coalition government are set to continue in the Greek capital after the intervention of the country’s head of state failed to achieve a breakthrough yesterday.
President Karolos Papoulias assumed his constitutional powers to chair talks on forming a government after the leaders of the three main parties failed in their attempts to negotiate a coalition last week.
In the first of the day’s many meetings, Alexis Tsipras, leader of the anti-bailout Radical Left Coalition (Syriza), rejected what he subsequently described as a “threatening and terrorising” dilemma presented by the leaders of the country’s two pro-bailout parties. This was that unless he participate in any new government arrangement fresh elections will be held.
“Syriza will not become an accomplice in a government that will implement the memorandum,” Mr Tsipras said, a short time after the meeting ended. “It is our patriotic duty not to become accomplices in a crime against Greek society.”
Syriza’s performance was the most spectacular of the May 6th election – it won 17 per cent of the vote. The party is now in second place and opinion polls indicate is is likely to come first in any subsequent election.
At the meeting, held in the presidential mansion, Mr Tsipras came under intense pressure from Antonis Samaras of conservative New Democracy and Evangelos Venizelos of socialist Pasok to join a four-way coalition that would also include the moderate Democratic Left.
Mr Tsipras maintained that with 168 MPs in the 300-seat parliament, New Democracy, Pasok and the Democratic Left did not require Syriza’s support to form a majority government.
According to a leaked transcript of the meeting, the Syriza leader also rejected a request that his MPs passively tolerate a three-way coalition comprising New Democracy Pasok and the Democratic Left by not voting against it.
The reaction from New Democracy and Pasok was scathing.
At the meeting, Mr Venizelos told Mr Tsipras that while he tried before the election to “achieve the impossible” by proposing a left-wing government with the hardline Communist Party, he was now refusing to “accept the possible” of a government of national unity.
“Syriza, by not offering its support to a coalition government, is not heeding the people’s mandate,” said Mr Samaras. “I honestly don’t know what Syriza hopes to achieve with all of this.”
Mr Papoulias, a former Pasok foreign minister, also met the other four party leaders last night, including Democratic Left leader Fotis Kouvelis.
In a series of interviews yesterday, Mr Kouvelis stressed that he would not lend his support to any government that did not include Syriza.
The president also received the leader of Golden Dawn, the neo-Nazi party catapulted into parliament with 21 seats in the election. It was the controversial party’s first formal political function at state level.
Although the meeting convened by the president with the three top party leaders was inconclusive, Mr Venizelos said he retained some limited but existing optimism that a government could be formed.
Mr Samaras appeared more pessimistic.
“I made every effort for the co-operation of all,” he said. “Syriza didn’t listen to the mandate of the Greek people and does not accept not only the formation of a viable government, but not even the tolerance of a government which would in fact undertake to renegotiate the terms of the and the loan agreement.” – (Additional reporting: Reuters)
