Health minister calls for snap elections
A few hours after Greece reached a multi-billion euro bailout agreement with its foreign creditors, Health Minister Panayiotis Kouroublis called for snap elections, saying that the leftist-led government needed a fresh mandate in order to implement the deep austerity measures.
“The mistake of [former prime minister] George Papandreou in 2010 was that he did not call for elections right away. SYRIZA was elected on a different program… than the one it now has to carry out. The existing program cannot be implemented on the basis of that mandate, it needs a new one,” Kouroublis said.
“Painful and difficult as it may be, elections must be held,” he said.
The agreement, reached after a 23-hour session of negotiations in Athens, needs to be adopted by the Greek House and euro area countries.
