Greece’s radical leftist Syriza party yesterday was set to start trying to build an anti-austerity Cabinet and prevent fresh elections, a day after the conservatives failed to form a coalition government.
Syriza leader Alexis Tsipras met for talks with Greek President Carolos Papoulias and given three days to form a government, with debt-laden Greece facing stern warnings from Germany and the EU to stick to its bailout deal.
“We will exhaust all possibilities to reach an understanding, primarily with the forces of the left,” Tsipras said.
The conservative New Democracy party’s failure to form a government on Monday underscored Greece’s precarious situation, with the country needing bailout funds to stay afloat, but where painful austerity measures have given rise to widespread voter anger.
The euro and world stock markets sank on Monday after voters kicked out the Greek government in weekend elections and voted in a Socialist president of France in a backlash against austerity, but Asian markets rebounded yesterday.
The political developments in France and Greece had stoked anxiety about the fate of the EU’s tough fiscal pact adopted in March to try to end the eurozone’s crippling debt crisis.
New Democracy leader Antonis Samaras said on Monday his efforts to form a “national salvation” administration had failed, -meaning that Syriza, as the runner-up in Sunday’s election, would now be tasked with forming a government.
“I did whatever I could to secure a result, but it was impossible,” the 60-year-old Samaras said in a televised address after a day of separate meetings with fellow leaders.
Samaras was rebuffed by Syriza and the small Democratic Left group, while the nationalist Independent Greeks and the Communist party refused to even meet with him.
Third-placed socialist party Pasok, which was formerly in a coalition with New Democracy, agreed to cooperate, but only if the leftists also joined.
The snub to Samaras suggests that Greece’s political parties are paying more attention to the punishing message sent by voters fed up with austerity measures than to worries about the future of the euro or warnings from Berlin and Brussels.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the chief proponent of austerity as the main way out of the eurozone crisis, said on Monday it was “of utmost importance” that Greece stuck to its reform path, although conceding this was “difficult.”
A spokeswoman for the European Commission said Brussels “hopes and expects that the future government of Greece will respect the engagements that Greece has entered into.”
Tsipras, who described the election results as a “message of overthrow,” has said he would seek to form a left-wing coalition to reject the “barbaric” measures of the EU-IMF loan agreement that saved Greece from fiscal collapse.
A new government has to be formed by Thursday next week or new elections will be called.
The country, in its fifth year of recession with unemployment at 20 percent, is committed to finding next month another 11.5 billion euros (US $15 billion) in savings over the next two years.
New Democracy and Pasok, which have alternated in power since 1974, saw their share of the vote collapse to 32.1 percent on Sunday from 77.4 percent at the last election as voters supported instead a raft of anti-austerity parties.
This left the two parties, which favor sticking to the bailout but with easier terms, with 149 MPs in the 300-seat parliament, insufficient for a re-run of the outgoing coalition led by technocrat Lucas Papademos.
Instead, voters angry after two years of cuts handed parties wanting to tear up the agreements a total of 151 parliamentary seats between them, including the leftist Syriza, which with 52 seats relegated Pasok to third place.
The others included Golden Dawn with 21 seats, the right-wing Independent Greeks with 33 MPs and the communist KKE with 26.
Berenberg Bank economist Holger Schmieding warned there was a risk that “Europe could turn off the flow of support funds and thus force Greece to leave the euro.”
Economist Guillaume Menuet of Citi said there was “significant potential” for Greece to miss its next round of targets and a 50 to 70 percent chance of what he called a “Grexit” within 12 to 18 months.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese