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Just four weeks ago, a high-level envoy from the EuropeanCommission was still "firmly convinced" that one party would get anabsolute majority or that there could be a coalition between thetwo main parties which signed the credit agreements with the EU andthe International Monetary Fund (IMF). But now, the Socialists andNew Democracy could not form a coalition even if they wanted to --they only have 149 seats between them, out of 300 in the Greekparliament. And so the vicious circle of the Greek crisis has been set inmotion once again. Warnings and Threats The IMF is already threatening not to pay out the next tranche ofaid, which is due in late May. German Chancellor Angela Merkel hasalready said, via her spokesman, that the current austerity-basedapproach is the only solution and has to be maintained. And theEuropean Commission has already warned that solidarity is based onreciprocity and emphasized that agreements which have already beenmade cannot be terminated now. Will it go on like this forever,with the donors issuing warnings and threats and the Greeks beingdefiant? The current situation is simple. There is no longer any support forthe existing EU-IMF strategy -- not among the population and now,clearly, no longer among the political parties either. The only twosmall parties that could have been junior partners in apro-austerity coalition failed to get any seats in parliament,having fallen short of the 3 percent threshold. The other partyleaders are all rejecting overtures from the Socialists and NewDemocracy -- whether left or right, they are all against the termsof the country's bailout. Panos Kammenos, head of the Independent Greeks party and a formerNew Democracy minister, said he would not even form a coalitionwith the conservatives if he was dead. Kammenos' recently foundedparty won 33 seats. Fotis Kouvelis, head of the moderate DemocraticLeft, also rejects a coalition, saying: "We will not follow apolicy which leads to the impoverishment of our people and oursociety." His party came from nowhere to win 19 seats. Antonis Samaras, who as head of the largest parliamentary group wastasked with building a coalition, gave up trying to form agovernment on Monday, less than 24 hours after the election. Hisappeals for parties to form a "government of national unity" wentunheeded. Unlikely Feat Now it's the turn of the election's big winner, Alexis Tsipras,the head of Syriza, the "Coalition of the Radical Left," to try toform a government. If he manages the unlikely feat of building acoalition, then the representatives of the troika of the IMF,European Commission and the European Central Bank (ECB) may as wellpack up and leave Athens. Alternatively, the creditors may agree torenegotiate the loan agreement, and both sides would try to find asustainable solution that would work under the new politicalconstellation. But that seems unlikely, given the two sides' trackrecord of threats and protests. A new government needs to be formed by May 17. The troika hasalready announced a visit scheduled for May 19 to inspect theprogress of the reforms it has demanded. But a third date could prove more significant: June 17. That iswhen new elections will be held, if the parties fail to form agovernment. I am an expert from sublimated-sportswear.com, while we provides the quality product, such as Customized Sports Bag Manufacturer , Sublimated Basketball Uniforms, Customized Sportswear,and more.
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