Athens upbeat that deal will be wrapped up soon
The government was confident on Friday that negotiations with the country’s creditors could be wrapped up soon.
Speaking to Sto Kokkino FM on Friday, government spokesman Dimitris Tzanakopoulos said he believed Greek officials and foreign auditors will have finalized “complementary” agreements with Greece’s creditors by Sunday.
“We have reasons to hope that, by Sunday, we will have finished the text of the complementary memorandum and the agreement with the International Monetary Fund so that the bill with the prior actions can be finished and submitted to Parliament and voted on,” he said.
From then on, he said “the institutions will have to write up a compliance report which will be submitted to the Eurogroup on May 22,” he added.
But it won’t be an easy ride for the government, as it will have to pass into legislation highly unpopular measures – including pension cuts and a lowering of the taxation threshold.
With this is mind, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has turned his focus on overcoming dissent within the coalition and turning the political tide by bidding to win back the confidence of a severely disillusioned electorate.
According to secret polls conducted by parties, the government, and especially Tsipras, are steadily losing ground. This also explains why the prime minister has taken it upon himself to appeal directly to the electorate with a series of countermeasures.
These measures include revisiting the public debate regarding a review of the Constitution which, he hopes, will highlight the stark differences between the government’s progressive profile and conservative New Democracy.
The government also plans to conduct regional conferences in order to persuade local authorities that stabilizing the economy by clinching a deal with the creditors will work in their interest.
Tsipras further plans to hold a SYRIZA congress to affirm his leadership of the party.
Close aides to Tsipras and government officials do not expect any serious “leakage” and say that all 153 coalition MPs will vote through the measures.
