Greek opposition party Potami says will back Tsipras in parliament

The government’s proposal secured an overwhelming 251 votes in Greece’s 300-seat chamber Saturday, even without the backing more than a dozen lawmakers from Tsipras’s Coalition of the Radical Left, or Syriza, party.

“With this deal, the public mandate and the proud “No” of the Greek people in the referendum is cancelled”, said Energy minister Panagiotis Lafazanis, one of the leftist hardliners whom Tsipras must sidestep to implement the reforms.

Tsipras faced a stark choice at a marathon eurozone summit that ended Monday morning: agree to the deal that tramples on practically all of his pre-election promises to repeal austerity, or see his country’s banks collapse and Greece crash out of Europe’s joint currency.

But by Tuesday, it was clear that the bailout that could save his nation might also cost him his job. Backed by this paid in capital – and the ability to call on member states to contribute more if needed – the ESM borrows on the financial markets and raises funds, which it then lends on to countries needing help.

Greece’s Syriza party came to power earlier this year by campaigning against austerity and the European powers that – in the view of many Greeks – had foisted that austerity on them.

A new poll said 55 percent of Germans supported their chancellor, Angela Merkel, on the bailout deal, while a third said they would have preferred a so-called Grexit.

The government holds 162 seats in Greece’s 300-member Parliament, and the bill is likely to pass as it enjoys the support of most opposition parties.

Syriza parliamentary spokesman Nikos Filis on Tuesday urged the party’s membership to fall into line, arguing that to do otherwise would amount to complicity in “a coup”.

He said one option would be for Greece to get bilateral loans, or suggested it would be possible for the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank to delay the payments.

[After bailout deal with Greece, finger-pointing and rifts in Europe].

He offered a stark assessment of the pain to come while promising that after a period of suffering, there would be light. Tuesday’s deal set tough terms for just discussing a third, of €86 billion, which will allow everyone to continue imagining that Greece can repay the €320 billion it already owes.

These commitments, the statement notes dryly, “are minimum requirements to start the negotiations with the Greek authorities”.

[Greek leader home with bailout deal but faces dissent over deep cuts ahead]. To deploy any of the 13.2 billion euros remaining in the EFSM, all 28 European Union governments would have to give their consent, because the fund is backed by the whole European Union budget. That would equal about $96 billion.

Instead of exiting a system weakened by its own internal contradictions and failings, Greece is to partake in another mistake wrapped in the rhetoric of pro-European kitsch.

Despite strong opposition, Tsipras also yielded to a plan to park assets for privatisation worth up to 50 billion euros in a special fund.

Greece has long resisted such measures but found its hands tied.

At some point, Greece must address an array of issues long pushed by the creditors, such as requiring the government to produce more reliable economic statistics; overhauling the regulations for businesses including pharmacies, bakeries and ferries; and changing the rules for labor unions and strikes.

And further out on the horizon, they worry about all of this leading to the creation of more vehement anti-euro parties within Greece.

“Germany’s bullying of the Greeks is cutting through and making some previously EU-neutral voters, such as myself, think again”, he wrote.

A Reuters poll of almost 60 economists conducted in the 24 hours after news of the agreement broke showed they were skeptical whether the deal was good for both Greece and Europe.

[What everybody needs to know about the deal to save Greece – and what happens next]. “The Greek people will not accept it”, Minister Lafazanis said of the latest bailout.

In Athens, Tsipras’s top lieutenants defended the decision even as a growing number of party members were on the brink of defection. People regularly move from one state to another in search of work. “It’s a feeling that is there and is totally understandable”, the economic minister, Minister of Economics George Stathakis, said in an interview in his office. Merkel has herself been asked to compare the brutal agreement being demanded of Greece to Germany’s own Versailles Treaty of 1919, where indebtedness and bondage took centre stage in a punitive arrangement. Banks have been closed for two weeks and there are limits on daily withdrawals of 60 euros from ATMs.