In his address, Mr Tsipras appeared to recast himself as a moderate by appealing to the political centre.
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Far-left rebels in Greece’s Syriza party have broken away to form a new party with 25 MPs, a parliament deputy speaker announced on Friday.
Political analysts in Athens expressed doubts whether Meimarakis’ or Lafazanis’ attempts will end conclusively, seeing the early elections as rather inevitable. The date of the election wasn’t immediately announced.
German Finance Ministry spokesman Juerg Weissgerber said that if there were delays in implementation of the bailout agreement due to the elections, “then it would mean that the next payments are delayed too“.
This would make Greece’s reform plans “a bit more credible”.
He maintained that Greece had got the best deal possible through the three-year 86 billion Euro bailout package.
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. It is something he said he would not do, but did, to win approval of a new $95 billion bailout, with the support of opposition lawmakers.
According to government sources Tsipras will suggest September 20.
Mr Meimarakis, however, has said he will try and use his mandate to form a government in the next few days.
Neither party is expected to be able to form a government.
“The odds are good that new elections will bring a more competent and pro-European government into power”, Fratzscher added, though he noted there would be some uncertainty in the short-term.
Tsipras’ reversal in accepting the demands by creditors led to outrage among Syriza hardliners. But he was forced to move quickly after almost a third of Syriza lawmakers refused to back the programme in parliament last week, robbing him of his majority. The New Democracy chief argued that Tsipras had resorted to holding a national election to deal with the rift in his party.
This latest round of elections come as Syriza has splintered following the passage of Greece’s latest bailout package.
After months of contentious negotiations with Greece’s creditors – its European neighbors, the European Central Bank and the worldwide Monetary Fund – Tsipras agreed to more tax increases and pension cuts.
“Now that this hard cycle has ended…”
Tsipras said he felt a moral obligation to place the third bail-out deal in front of the people to allow them to judge both what he achieved, and his mistakes.
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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.
