Racing against time, Greek officials scrambled Monday to draft a list of reforms in order to secure continued funding from the country's international lenders.
Forced to temper many of his anti-austerity pledges, including promises to tear up Greece's loan agreements, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras at the same time faced a wave of fierce dissent over the latest moves, opening fissures in his fractious hard-left Syriza party.
Greek officials have until midnight to submit the list of reform proposals aimed at winning a four-month extension of the country's bailout, which will help it avert bankruptcy. Bailout monitors are to review the proposals during a teleconference scheduled for early Tuesday.
Failure to win their approval would force another meeting of the single European currency zone's 19 finance ministers, reviving fears of a Greek default and the country's potential exit from the eurozone.
Locked out of international markets, Greece has been reliant on a 246-billion euro bailout program since the economy imploded in 2009. The program is set expire on Feb. 28.
Details of the proposed reforms remain unclear, and eurozone officials have repeatedly complained that draft proposals presented by Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis in meetings last week were vague and lacking estimates of how the measures would affect the economy and the government.
Despite the concerns, senior government officials insisted that Athens is "near certain" its list of reform measures will be endorsed, paving the way for the four-month funding extension, which Greek officials secured on Friday after several rounds of acrimonious talks with its lenders.
"Throughout this procedure we have had an open line of communications with Brussels," a senior Finance Ministry official said. "A negative review of the measures would come as a surprise."
Nikos Pappas, the minister of state, told local media Monday that the measures would center on Greece's bid to tackle tax evasion and streamline the civil service. Another official close to the talks told The Times that the list would also feature plans for privatizations, a notable shift from policies Syriza advocated during his election campaign.
Tsipras surged to power last month vowing to shred the country's loan obligations, stop privatizations, increase the minimum wage and rehire thousands of public-sector workers sacked at the height of the country's financial crisis.
Though Friday's provisional agreement allows Greece to amend its obligations, it doesn't reduce them. That situation has sparked fierce dissent from some of the prime minister's closest party cadres.
On Monday, Yiorgos Katrougalos, the new minister of administrative reform, said he would resign if the government retreated from its negotating "red lines."
Also, Syriza's most revered member, Manolis Glezos, accused the government of selling "illusions" to voters. In a note posted on his blog, the 92-year-old political veteran, who gained fame as a resistance fighter in World War II and once scaled the Acropolis to rip down a Nazi flag under Athens' occupation, apologized to the Greek people "for participating in this illusion."
By failing to throw out the existing bailout deal, Glezos said, the government was "renaming fish and meat."
Nevertheless, Tsipras' popularity continues to soar, according to recent polls.
Weekend polls found that more than 80% of respondents said they were supportive of the negotiating stance, while 86% said they felt his leadership had inspired a new sense of national pride.
A separate poll found that Tsipras' popularity rating had risen by 42 percentage points in a month, reaching 87%, the highest of any Greek politician since the restoration of democracy in 1974.
Carassava is a special correspondent.
Copyright © 2015, Los Angeles TimesAnda sedang membaca artikel tentang
Greek officials scramble to draft reforms as bailout deadline looms
Dengan url
http://sehatgembiralami.blogspot.com/2015/02/greek-officials-scramble-to-draft.html
Anda boleh menyebar luaskannya atau mengcopy paste-nya
Greek officials scramble to draft reforms as bailout deadline looms
namun jangan lupa untuk meletakkan link
Greek officials scramble to draft reforms as bailout deadline looms
sebagai sumbernya
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar