Tsipras Says Coalition `Unnatural' as Nail-Biter Election Looms

Alexis Tsipras told Greek voters that forming a grand coalition with his arch rivals would be “unnatural” and that a refusal to do so won’t stoke further political turmoil in Europe’s most indebted state.

   With opinion polls putting his Syriza party neck and neck with main opposition New Democracy ahead of next week’s elections, the ex-prime minister whose Aug. 20 resignation triggered the snap elections used a two-hour televised debate to defend his seven tumultuous months as head of government and make a spirited case for his re-election.

   “There is no doubt that immediately after the elections, this country will have a government" but “it will have either a progressive or a conservative government,” the 41-year-old leader said in his face-off with New Democracy leader Evangelos Meimarakis.

   As prime minister, Tsipras faced an uprising within his party against the government’s decision to strike an austerity-attached bailout agreement with euro area member-states. A Metron Analysis poll broadcast on Antenna TV before the debate started showed New Democracy tied with Syriza at 24.6 percent of voting intentions.

   With every survey published so far projecting a fragmented parliament after the election, Greece risks being dragged into difficult coalition talks that could delay measures required by creditors in exchange for emergency loans, including recapitalization of banks.

   In a reversal from previous comments, Tsipras didn’t rule out joining forces with the centrist River and Pasok parties or a return of his coalition with the right-wing Independent Greeks party.

   “I ask for a parliamentary majority, but I will respect the result, and as soon as I get the mandate, I will seek the widest possible consensus, so that we can have a government,” Tsipras, the once-fervent opponent of bailout conditions, said.

   In the course of the debate, Tsipras’s 61-year-old opponent reiterated calls for a coalition government, no matter the result of the elections, and said that all pro-European parties, including Syriza, should now implement the agreement that Tsipras signed. Meimarakis accused Tsipras of betraying promises to end austerity.

Πηγή: bloomberg.com