Tsipras will likely attempt to stave off any internal party meetings until after a deal is done with the creditors, at which point it will be hard to avoid a split.
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While the prime minister trimmed the rebellion from 39 “no” votes and abstentions last week to 36 on Thursday, in both cases he was forced to rely on opposition parties to get the legislation passed.
Greece will “fully normalize working methods with the Institutions, including the necessary work on the ground in Athens, to improve program implementation and monitoring”, according to the summit agreement Tsipras signed up to.
Tsipras said approval of the bill would help Greece regain market confidence and tap bond markets again.
Financial expert Patrick Young said Greece capitulated to its own “servitude” – yielding to Troika officials ruling by “Euro-delusion”, the Greek people legislated to “Euro-serfdom”.
Anti-austerity protesters took to the streets as the Greek parliament debated the measures, with some 6,000 people, mostly members of the Communist-affiliated PAME trade union, gathered in Athens’ Syntagma Square.
Thousands demonstrated outside of parliament as the bill was debated, with protests briefly turning violent as petrol bombs were thrown at police.
“We were at the limits of our economy and our banking system, and at the limits of Europe – where conservative forces, obsessed with austerity, dominate”, he added. However, their next major deadline is later next month on 20 August, when they will be requited to pay the European Central Bank (ECB) €3.2bn.
Fearing a run by depositors flocking to take their savings out of Greek banks, the government imposed capital controls more than three weeks ago, restricting daily withdrawals to 60 euros, or about $65, per account holder. Extra ECB liquidity means that Greek banks will still be able to hand out cash.
The Greek premier said that negotiations on a new bailout up to €86 billion ($93 billion) will restart after the parliament approves the last set of prior actions.
The former Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, who had opposed the first round of reforms, voted in favour of the second set.
But Tsipras is losing the far-left wing of his leftist Syriza coalition, which has belatedly figured out that Tsipras’ bailout negotiations have been a disaster.
But the proposed Greek reform package doesn’t include a farm tax hike, and on Monday, Tsipras said he would need until August 5 to rally support to get one approved by Parliament.
Syriza rebels in Thursday’s vote included the firebrand parliament speaker, Zoe Konstantopoulou. “We will fight for countermeasures and for funds for society”, he told lawmakers.
But party critics insisted they continued to back Tsipras while disagreeing with a third bailout. Desperate times call for desperate measures, Greek creditors respond, arguing that this is what happens when your national debt hits 177 percent of gross domestic product and a crumbling economy leaves one in four of the workforce with no job.
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Athens’ third bailout will fail as dismally as the first two, leaving the Hellenic Republic more greatly debt entrapped than ever – heading toward 200% of GDP on its present path.
