Alexis Tsipras to Greece: ‘You must decide with your vote’

But while the term “flip-flopper” may have cost John Kerry the US presidency in 2004, for Mr. Tsipras, the label has not yet been pinned to his lapel.

(AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris). Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, center, leaves the Presidential palace after a meeting with Greek President Prokopis Pavlopoulos, in Athens, on Thursday, August 20, 2015.

Christian Lenk, strategist at DZ Bank, said Tsipras’ resignation was a double-edged sword.

(Giannis Kotsiaris/ InTime News via AP). However, when Tsipras took office, he did a complete 180-degree turn.

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is set to call early elections, state television said on Thursday, hoping to quell a rebellion in his leftist Syriza party and seal support to implement a tough bailout programme. This is necessary because about a third of the parliament members from his own party abandoned him after he agreed to a bailout deal with Greece’s troika of global creditors. Greece’s governing Syriza party had campaigned for a “No”, saying that the vote would give the country more leverage on the bargaining table.

The premier planned to propose September 20 as the date for new parliamentary elections, according to a government official. This will involve letting the two main opposition parties – the conservative New Democracy and the Nazi-inspired Golden Dawn – try to form a government.

If this fails, the next largest party must be given a chance. “We need to know whether the government has or does not have a majority”, he said.

“Even those who are not satisfied with Tsipras [support] him … because there is not any alternative solution, neither a person nor a party”, says Kostas Vergopoulos, a political economy professor at Paris VIII University. At that point, Parliament will be dissolved and a caretaker government appointed to lead the country to early elections within a month.

But the deal came with strict terms for more belt-tightening. “To fight the hard demands of the creditors”.

Greece’s European creditors did not appear dismayed by Tsipras’ move, which was widely expected.

If a deal had not been reached, Greece would have been faced with shuttered banks on the brink of collapse and the prospect of having to print a parallel currency, with an eventual exit from the European Monetary Union.

The other reason was that Syriza is part of a government that needs to implement a program that is different to that which it was elected for.

The political uncertainty took its toll on the market, with the Athens Stock Exchange closing 3.5 per cent. He said he had a “moral and political obligation” to let voters decide who should be the person leading the country in this “new hopeful era”.

Tsipras said they managed to improve the conditions of the bailout. Tsipras could also see his popularity plummet once Greeks feel the burden of new tax measures and cuts.

In fact, precisely because of his hardline credentials, it is the Finance Minister that will do most of the talking during the debate, making the case for the government’s proposal to agree on the Greek bailout agreement.

He said Greece is obliged to fulfill the agreement but also to mitigate its adverse consequences.