Greece blinked first, but lenders’ response could plunge Athens into political turmoil

Greece blinked first. In a 13-page document sent to its international lenders last Thursday night, Alexis Tsipras's government agreed to a raft of spending cuts and tax increases that look almost identical to proposals it rejected just two weeks ago.

Less than a week after the Greek electorate, encouraged by the ruling Syriza party, opted for an emphatic No, Tsipras said Yes. The policy reversal stunned some of his colleagues and left No voters angry and disillusioned.

How can he sell this, and will his party accept it?

In the early hours of Saturday morning, as he sought to persuade Greek MPs to give his government the green light to negotiate with the creditors, Tsipras was candid and upfront. Looking drawn and weary, he made no attempt to pretend this was what Syriza promised when it came to power in January, or what it had spent the past six months fighting for.

Inexperienced

Broadly, his explanation was along these lines: Syriza did everything humanly possible to get a better deal. Yes, we made mistakes, we were inexperienced, but we pushed hard and brought the negotiations to the wire. We tried to strengthen our negotiating hand through the referendum, in the hope the lenders would be persuaded by the power of a democratic vote. But it didn’t work.

We came up against some powerful and doctrinaire opponents, some of whom were determined to get Greece out of the euro zone, using economic problems as a pretext for what became a political objective. We were pressured and, at worst, blackmailed. Now they have presented us with an ultimatum: sign on the dotted line or leave the euro zone.

With the economy in a tailspin and cash running out, Greece was now at “the burning zone”, Tsipras said, and it had to make a decision. He told parliament he had no mandate to bring Greece out of the single currency – that was the second message of last Sunday’s referendum. In other words, he was backed into a corner with only one realistic option.

However, the Greek side was convinced the referendum served a useful purpose and that it won them key concessions in the past week. First, the proposals Athens rejected in late June were for a five-month lifeline of €7 billion. This time, for the same terms, Greece was looking to secure €53 billion over three years (it may ultimately need double that figure, European leaders said yesterday). Given that it was widely expected Greece would have to seek a new long-term bailout later this year, Tsipras saw this as an obvious achievement.

Second, the Greek government saw signs of movement on debt relief. Since it called the referendum, the IMF has said Greece's debts were unsustainable and key European leaders, including European Council president Donald Tusk and economic affairs commissioner Pierre Moscovici, had spoken publicly about the need to ease Greece's debt burden. The issue was a taboo two weeks ago, Tsipras said.

Athens could well secure wins on both counts. Tsipras’s problem, however, is that he had no guarantee the most hardline creditors would accept debt restructuring. Nor can he be certain they will accept his €13 billion in cuts.

Humiliate

The weekend’s talks in Brussels brought little reassurance for Athens on either front; the insistence by the Germans, the Finns and others that Athens should accept more austerity, and implement some of it immediately as a precondition for talks on a bailout, will solidify a sense within Syriza that the creditors are out to humiliate the party.

That will have real political consequences in Athens, where Tsipras is already struggling to keep his party onside. He won the parliamentary vote on Saturday thanks only to the opposition’s support, as 17 Syriza members either voted No, abstained or didn’t show up. In effect he lost his majority. And given at least a dozen more Syriza MPs say they will not vote for austerity measures, that will make it difficult for Tsipras to introduce VAT increases, make cuts to a top-up payment for poorer pensioners and pass other unpopular laws he has committed to enacting.

In theory he could stagger on, relying on the opposition to win each vote. But his authority would slowly diminish and the internal rebellion would become difficult to contain.

Quite soon he may well have no choice but to reconfigure his government or call an election, plunging Greece into yet more political turmoil at the worst possible moment.