Zoe Konstantopoulou

Parliament Vice President and Radical Left Coalition SYRIZA member Alexis Mitropoulos told private Mega TV on Friday that he expected social conditions to worsen in autumn.

“We have to deal with the most anti-social package ever drafted,” he said.

Speaker of the House Zoe Konstantopoulou, a high profile Radical Left Coalition (SYRIZA) cadre, appears to be on a direct collision course with Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, who she is meeting at noon on Thursday.

Thirty-one ruling SYRIZA MPs failed to “toe the party line” during the early morning vote in Parliament on a second package of prior actions linked to the third bailout memorandum agreed to with creditors last week. If the abstainers are included, 36 ruling party deputies did not ratify the bill.

Other political leaders’ statements from Parliament in the early morning (!) hours of Thursday on on the second package of prior actions envisioned in a memorandum for a third Greek bailout:

Potami party leader Stavros Theodorakis:

“Government’s handling of economic crisis brought the country to a worse state than previous situation”

Main opposition New Democracy (ND) president Vangelis Meimarakis employed past descriptions used by ruling leftist SYRIZA party — when it was in the opposition — to ask whether “coup instigators” and “criminals of Europe” gave us the money to remain alive?

The latest obstacle in the vote for a second package of prior actions via an emergency procedure emerged ominously on Wednesday in the form of non other than Parliament President Zoe Konstantopoulou, a high-profile SYRIZA cadre who appears on a direct collision course with the SYRIZA government and PM Alexis Tsipras.

Both top opposition leaders, center-right New Democracy’s (ND) president Vangelis Meimarakis and centrist Potami party leader Stavros Theodorakis warned this week against snap elections in the country.
Crisis-plagued Greece last held elections in January, with leftist SYRIZA taking power in a coalition with the rightist-populist Independent Greeks’ (AN.EL) party.

There was speculation as to what stand Zoe Konstantopoulou would  take concerning the fast-track voting of legislation imposed by Greece’s partners in exchange for funds for Greece.

The Greek Parliament approved on Saturday the latest reform proposals, which the government in Athens submitted to the eurozone late on Thursday.

The proposed package of spending cuts, pension savings and tax increases, which Greece has to fulfill in order to be granted further bailout, garnered an overwhelming parliamentary support.

Eurozone finance ministers meet on July 11 in Brussels to discuss the Greek governent’s request for an aid program. The meeting is held in the wake of a vote on the proposal in Greek Parliament where 251 lawmakers gave Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras crucial approval for the 13 billion euros worth of austerity measures to obtain a third bailout program for Greece.