Members of the small right-wing junior coalition partner in the otherwise leftist Greek government continued to walk a “political tightrope” this week, expressing overt opposition to a bilateral agreement resolving the fYRoM “name issue” but at the same time continuing to prop up the poll-trailing Tsipras government.
In televised comments on Wednesday morning, the party’s vice-president, long-time politician Panagiotis Sgouridis, said MPs of the Independent Greeks’ (AN.EL) will not again support a “confidence vote” in Parliament for the government – essentially setting the stage for “showdown” when the agreement eventually comes before lawmakers for ratification.
Nevertheless, months are expected to pass before the leftist-rightist coalition government brings the agreement, signed by the foreign ministers of Greece and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (fYRoM) last Sunday, to Parliament for ratification.
Moreover, Sgouridis also referred to economic “considerations” in exchange for the Tsipras government pushing through an agreement to solve the nearly three-decades-long “name issue”. The latter has prevented a normalization of relations between Greece and its northern neighbor, a one-time Yugoslav constituent state, and blocked the latter’s Euro-Atlantic prospects.
One AN.EL deputy (Dimitris Kammenos) who voted in favor of a “no confidence” motion in Parliament over the weekend, and was duly expelled from the party’s Parliament group, also referred to future debt relief extended by creditors and milder austerity measures in 2019 in exchange for the agreement. The government vehemently denied the latter’s statements.
Sgouridis said the issue of “considerations” was discussed on the margins of an official briefing of the party’s MPs by Cabinet ministers.
