Greece’s Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said on Thursday that he will resign immediately, opening the way for early elections, ekathimerini.com reported.
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Now that the country has secured its funding, Tsipras said he felt obliged to let the Greek people evaluate his work.
The first is that dozens of Tsipras’ governing left-wing Syriza party lawmakers voted against the government on the bailout deal.
The finance ministers of the 19-country eurozone late Wednesday announced that they had formally approved a new bailout worth up to 86 billion euros ($95 billion) after European parliaments, including the German Bundestag, had given it their green light.
With dissidents within the ruling Syriza party openly blasting the government of making a U-turn on the anti-austerity platform that brought the party to power last January, early polls seem nearly inevitable.
A formal announcement of his resignation is expected Thursday afternoon, along with a televised address to the Greek people.
A caretaker government would take over until elections are held, led by Greece’sSupreme Court President Vassiliki Thanou-Christophilou, who would be the first woman to serve as prime minister in Greece’s history. He won the vote with opposition support but lost his guaranteed parliamentary majority.
Greece paid a huge debt to the European Central Bank on Thursday, effectively starting its third mammoth bailout.
The development clears the way for the Tsipras to decide his next moves in the domestic political scene, analysts in Athens noted.
Almost a third of Syriza party MPs refused to back the program in parliament last week, robbing him of a guaranteed political majority.
“The present parliament can not offer a government of majority or a national unity government”, Tsipras told Pavlopoulos during a meeting on Thursday night.
The prime minister has talked about calling a Syriza congress to resolve differences with the rebels.
Despite his policy U-turn, Tsipras continues to enjoy popular support and was far ahead of his opposition rivals in opinion polls, although none have been published since the bailout agreement was finalized.
Knock-on effects of capital controls imposed in June, which are likely to stay until Greek banks are recapitalised later this year with bailout funds, will also hurt voters.
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The other reason is Syriza is part of a government that needs to implement a program that is different to that for which it was elected.
