Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras on Monday evening again pledged that he will not declare snap elections in the country coinciding with May’s European Parliament elections.
“Even though many have ‘titillated’ me with the prospect of holding national and European Parliament elections the same day, I have resisted and this will not happen,” he told a mostly partisan audience of young adults gathered at an Athens theater. The event, in fact, was organized by a Europarliament MP belonging to Tsipras’ SYRIZA party.
Tsipras and his hard left ruling party have trailed main opposition New Democracy (ND) party in every mainstream opinion poll for the past two years, with many polls even showing a double-digit percentage point lead for the center-right party.
A majority of Cabinet ministers, SYRIZA MPs and top cadres support the prospect of staying in power until the very last day, i.e. October 2019, with the reasoning being to allow a fragile economic recovery and a handful of welfare spending measures to take effect, as well as to ameliorate opposition to the recently signed Prespa agreement.
Conversely, a minority of SYRIZA lawmakers consider that a possible ND landslide victory in the upcoming European Parliament and local government elections (May 2019) will run into an even greater rout in October.
