Greek main opposition says will not back PM in confidence vote

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’s Syriza party looked set to split after the leader of its far-left faction called for a new movement to fight a bailout deal that lawmakers will vote on later on Thursday.

Greek lawmakers approved their country’s draft third bailout on Friday after a almost 24-hour marathon parliamentary procedure culminated in a vote that saw the government coalition suffer significant dissent.

Commission spokeswoman Annika Breidthardt said the third programme, worth 85 billion euros over three years in return for sweeping austerity and reform measures, had been presented to the Eurogroup chaired by Jeroen Dijsselbloem of the Netherlands for Friday’s meeting.

“The topic of elections in September is gaining attention once again, although at this stage further political instability is not to the benefit of Greece”, Eirini Tsekeridou, an analyst at Swiss bank Julius Baer, said. Greece’s finance and economy ministers were locked in negotiations with representatives of creditors and said that they expect the bailout accord to go to the country’s parliament for approval by August 18.

It was crucial that the bill passed this morning, as eurozone finance ministers are due to meet in Brussels this afternoon, where they will decide whether to approve the draft agreement.

The German newspaper, Bild, released a two-page document by the Finance Ministry, which put to question issues including Greece’s debt sustainability, the worldwide Monetary Fund’s (IMF) role in the crisis and privatization in Greece.

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras also survived a significant rebellion within his own Syriza party.

Tsakalotos insisted Greece does not want an interim loan, which some creditors have proposed as a solution if the main bailout deal cannot be finalized with all creditors in time.

Tsipras said Germany, and in particular its finance minister, Wolfgang Schaeuble, was attempting to undermine Greece and its position in Europe’s joint currency, and would rather see Greece kicked out of the euro.

Former Energy Minister Panagiotis Lafazanis, who is opposed to the new bailout agreement, has dismissed it as “a negotiating fiasco” and said Tsipras could not “avoid the outcry by resorting guiltily and hurriedly to elections”.

His move “finalizes his decision, taken a while ago, to choose a different path than the government and Syriza“, the government said in an emailed note.

Tsipras has said Syriza will hold a special congress after the summer to debate its differences. Berlin is more open to extensions of debt, however. “These are part of the review process which is not yet completed”.

The figures showed second quarter growth up 1.4 percent compared with the same period the previous year. Things are likely to have worsened since then as the government imposed capital controls on June 29 to save the Greek banking system from collapse.

During the last two votes on reforms demanded by creditors in exchange for the cash injection, dozens of Syriza lawmakers mutinied, leaving him relying on the opposition to push through more of the austerity he once vowed to dump.