Galery

1

At 7:30 pm on Monday, the President of the republic Carlos Papoulias will again invite the leaders of PASOK, New Democracy, the Democratic Left and SYRIZA to a meeting in an effort to form a coalition government. Evangelos Venizelos, Antonis Samaras and Fotis Kouvelis have accepted the invitation and will sit together again at the table under the supervision of the President in order to take the final decision on whether they will be able to form a government or if there will be new elections in Greece. Alexis Tsipras has refused to attend the meeting. Thus, he wants to show that he will not change his position and will not support the forces that want to keep the aid to Greece under the bailout agreement.

The first round of contacts on Sunday was unsuccessful. Currently, political leaders are making a last attempt to prevent the convening of new elections. The main problem appears to be SYRIZA, which is the second strongest party after New Democracy. However, none of the political forces has enough votes to form a majority government. The extreme left declares itself as pro-EU but against the Memorandum of financial assistance. Local and foreign analysts are adamant that it cannot be both ways. In other words, they believe that if Greece abandons its obligations under the Memorandum, it will have to leave the euro area - a reciprocal result to the "pro-European" policy SYRIZA is trying to promote.

PASOK and the Democratic Left are willing to support a government of New Democracy, if SYRIZA is also involved. They believe that when the extreme left party ranks second in popularity, it must assume its responsibilities in governing the country. SYRIZA, in turn, already knows it has a better hand than the other political forces. They insist on new elections, in which they will win the highest number of votes as polls show, or to become the main opposition in the coalition government and to later reap the fruits of Greek people’s discontent of the austerity economic measures.

To be continued.