What made Antonis Samaras and Vangelis Venizelos move forward the process of electing a new President of the Republic? Why, immediately following the passage of the 2015 budget through parliament, did they backtrack from their earlier, confidently expressed position that a new president would be elected in February?
One might believe that they finally listened to the one and only piece of advice offered to Samaras by the former Prime Minster Kostas Karamanlis: that in these instances, loose ends are costly.
That may be so. But equally, or more important is the certainty of the coalition partners that this parliament cannot elect a new president. That certainty comes from the current political atmosphere, from the result of the vote for the 2015 budget, and from the behind-the-scenes meetings with the MPs who could potentially close the gap between the 155 votes the government has and the 180 it needs.
The scenario of a ‘Parenthesis of the Left’
Given the above, what Samaras and Venizelos are truly seeking is not to win this hand, but to be done with. Ultimately they don’t want to stay in power having elected a new President of the Republic, but to leave power a little sooner. Or at least to appear to have done so. A paradox? Not at all. Particularly if we see it from their point of view: in this manner they believe that they will be setting a trap for Alexis Tsipras, into which he will fall.
In other words, if the various available information is combined with an analysis of the new circumstances at the political level and all this is taken together with the latest Eurogroup decision – which requires Greece to request an extension of its bailout program until the end of February – then one will conclude that Samaras and Venizelos are aiming for the ‘parenthesis of the left’ scenario. It is the last weapon they have at their disposal – albeit a high risk strategy.
Analyzing this scenario, three distinct phases emerge. The first has just begun and rests on two predictions: firstly that a president of the republic will not be elected, and secondly that SYRIZA will win the snap elections that will follow – with or without a majority. In any event, Alexis Tsipras will form a government.
The basis of the scenario is in the next phase. When Antonis Samaras gathers his things from the prime ministerial mansion and Tsipras moves in, that will be the only thing to have really changed. The government and the make-up of parliament. Everything else will remain the same.
In Europe the same governments will be in power, the organs of the EU will have the same makeups, the Treaties which govern the operation of the EU will be unchanged and the international environment will be unaltered. The country will have the same characteristics, the same problems, the same fiscal profile, the same debt and the same voters. It will remain under international financial oversight, it will have the same obligations, have the same legal commitments and will be able to borrow only from those whom it owes. Additionally the country will have only just asked to extend the Memorandum agreement.
As leader of the opposition, Alexis Tsipras has put forward a platform of demands but in practice no European body is obliged to respond to, vote on or rule on any of them. Things will change however when he sits behind the label ‘GREECE’. Then he will need to present his positions and await a response – because that’s how the European Union works.
From that moment on the third and most interesting phase of the scenario will begin. As Prime Minister, Alexis Tsipras will have two options. The first will be to collide head-on with Europe and insist on his positions over the debt and a repeal of the sum of the legal changes and reforms implemented due to the Memorandum Agreement. The second will be to perform a 180 degree turn and accept a new agreement - which will effectively be a Third Memorandum, leaving himself exposed on the domestic front.
While one cannot determine what his final handling will be, or rule out the possibility that a way out of the dilemma will appear, the people behind this scenario predict that in either case the government will not survive. It will be faced with no choice but to resort to very early elections.
Betting on this turn of events, they have effectively decided to give him the keys, moving forward developments which appear unavoidable. Together with power, they are also giving him the extension offered by Eurogroup – which was given to the country and not to the administration and in order to implement what is left of the Memorandum, not to avoid it.
But…
Theoretically it is not improbable that events will truly play out as such and the Tsipras government proves to be short-lived. There are however other indications that this might not be the case.
One of these is history. Whenever outgoing governments left with the impression that they were soon to return, that simply did not happen. Neither was Andreas Papandreou a ‘socialist parenthesis’ in 1981 as the right then believed it would be, neither did Kostas Karamanlis’s government become a ‘rightwing parenthesis’ in 2004, as PASOK believed.
The second indication is that the scenario appears to include another questionable assumption: that Samaras and Venizelos will form a coalition again – if they can. Such a possibility, beyond the fact that it restricts their pre-election movements – will not play at all well within PASOK, where George Papandreou and others are agitating for leadership elections, nor within New Democracy which is keen to stop hemorrhaging voters to the right.
Furthermore there is a third element: the potential for whomever is in power to completely change tacks and survive. It happened with both Papandreous in 1981 and 2009 respectively, when both father and son abandoned their pre-election platforms after coming to power.
A prime minister of a member state has the capability to sign his own agreements with the country’s partners and to strike his own balances within Europe. And a Greek Prime Minister can alter the situation within the country with regards to his support.
If this comes to pass then the only people to have fallen into the 'trap' of a ‘parenthesis of the left’ will have been those who created it.
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