Alexis Tsipras hit by Syriza rebellion as Greece approves bailout deal

[muriel_volestrangler]

Source: The Guardian

After a tumultuous, often ill-tempered and at times surreal all-night debate, Greek MPs voted early on Friday to approve a new multibillion euro bailout deal aimed at keeping their debt-stricken country afloat.

Live Eurozone finance ministers decide on Greek bailout - live updates
Rolling coverage as Greek MPs vote on the country’s third bailout, plus the latest growth figures from across the eurozone
Read more
But a fierce rebellion in the ranks of his leftist Syriza party saw prime minister Alexis Tsipras fall short of the 120 votes he would need to survive a censure motion, leading to speculation he would call a confidence vote next week and snap elections as early as next month.

More than 40 Syriza hardliners, including controversial former finance minister Yannis Varoufakis, failed to toe the party line, angry at the punishing terms of the €85bn (£60bn) package and what they said was a sell-out of the party’s principles and a betrayal of its promises.

Tsipras needed the support of opposition parties after the marathon session to win parliament’s backing for the bill in a 9.45am vote, which the government eventually won by a comfortable margin of 222 votes to 64, with 11 abstentions.


Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/aug/14/greek-parliament-still-thrashing-out-rescue-deal-vote

---

(sorry about the meaningless phrase that was the earlier title I pasted into this thread by mistake)

[Igel]

1. So, in other other words no real news.

It passed, as expected.

SYRIZA pitched a fit, as expected.

There's increased likelihood of political instability in Greece. Which is strange, because there's always increased likelihood of political instability in Greece. Perhaps I should call it "stably increasing levels of political instability in Greece"?

And Varoufakis' usual version of democracy, which has to be something like "I will earnestly oppose the will of the majority and do everything to thwart them until they have done the one true democratic thing and fallen in line behind their leader--me!" There's a lot of that kind of arrogance going on.

(Yes, I just screwed over the temporal-semantic properties of "arrogance", from being a noun denoting a state to being a deverbal noun of an activity verb, or maybe an achievement verb with aspectual focus on its activity portion.)

[Comrade Grumpy]

2. Tsipras organized the referendum and then ignored the results.

No wonder parts of Syriza are unhappy with him.

I don't think he expected it to pass.