Syriza’s leader seeks to reassure the markets over debt pile

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/18/alexis-tsipras-syriza-markets-debt-reassure

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The man who could soon be Greece’s prime minister – if MPs fail to elect a president and snap polls are called - has sought to placate international markets days before parliament holds a second vote for a new head of state.

Alexis Tsipras insisted on Thursday that his radical left Syriza party would seek a “negotiated solution” to the problem of the country’s monumental debt pile and, unless forced to, would not be making any unilateral moves.

“Negotiation means that we want an agreed solution,” he told Reuters, according to transcripts released by his office. “Regarding the debt and the loan agreement which we will renegotiate: we have no intention to make unilateral moves unless they force us to make unilateral moves, although I believe that no one will force us to make unilateral moves because no one will benefit from such a development, in the heart of Europe.”

Syriza has consistently led opinion polls in recent months with an ever-growing number of Greeks finding solace from austerity in its fierce anti-bailout rhetoric.

The Greek constitution demands that early elections are called if Athens’ 300-member House fails to muster the required majority to elect a president. On Wednesday prime minister Antonis Samaras’ conservative-dominated coalition fell far short of gathering the 200 votes required for its candidate, the former European commissioner Stavros Dimas. MPs reconvene for a second vote on Tuesday.

But the 40-year-old Tsipras, whose party includes groups ranging from Maoists to greens, said the measures that had fuelled Greece’s austerity-driven recession would be annulled if Syriza assumed power.

As the price of €240bn in aid, creditors have demanded swingeing budget cuts since Athens’ brush with bankruptcy five years ago.

“We will cancel austerity and the memorandum,” he said of the bailout accord signed by Greece and its lenders at the EU, ECB and IMF. “We will replace it with a national growth and reconstruction plan … that is to say a programme that is fiscally balanced and does not create new deficits.”

New austerity measures in a country that has seen its GDP drop by more than a quarter – and whose unemployment rates are nudging 26% – were “non-negotiable,” he said.