It was unclear whether former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, who has criticised Mr Tsipras’s “surrender” to global creditors over the country’s third credit bailout since 2010, would also jump ship.
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“The political mandate of the January 25 elections has exhausted its limits and now the Greek people have to have their say”, Tsipras said in a televised address Thursday night.
Rebels from Greece’s governing left-wing Syriza are to break away and form a new party, according to the BBC.
Prime Minister and Syriza Leader, Alexis Tsipras, stood down on Thursday, paving the way for new elections.
Although Schaeuble has said publicly that kicking Greece out of the Eurozone might be preferable to another bailout, he urged the Bundestag, Germany’s lower house of Parliament, to ratify the new rescue plan “in the interest of Greece and the interest of Europe”.
It was not immediately clear how much support the new Popular Unity group could steal from Tsipras, who is hoping the snap polls will return him to power in a new position of strength.
Hardline lawmakers in Tsipras’ radical left Syriza party announced Friday they were splitting from the party and forming their own anti-austerity movement, which becomes the third largest group in Parliament.
President Prokopis Pavlopoulos met conservative New Democracy party head Evangelos Meimarakis on Friday and asked him to try to form a government.
Constantopoulou, whose father was a former head of Syriza’s precursor party Synaspismos – and was a Greek presidential candidate a decade ago – vehemently opposed the third EU bailout Tsipras signed on July 13 and repeatedly sought to frustrate its ratification through stalling tactics.
“The Commission respects the decision of Prime Minister Tsipras to go to the polls swiftly”, Breidthardt said.
German chancellor Angela Merkel, who was on a trip to Brazil, said that Tsipras’s announcement of an election was part of the solution not the problem. “Nevertheless, we have to believe that any Greek government to come will implement what was agreed”, he added. The deal, which was accepted despite a public referendum in which Greek voters rejected further austerity measures, caused outrage over a perceived reversal that manifested in violent protests in Athens.
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Greece’s complex constitution has special stipulations for holding elections less than 12 months after the previous vote, meaning the president must first consult other major parties to see if they can form a government, a highly unlikely option. However it is “a far better agreement that any previous government has brought up”, she stressed.
