{"id":2425,"date":"2019-02-13T20:39:38","date_gmt":"2019-02-13T20:39:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/euromenaenergy.com\/?p=2425"},"modified":"2019-02-13T20:39:38","modified_gmt":"2019-02-13T20:39:38","slug":"how-greeces-pm-hopes-to-solve-his-election-riddle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/?p=2425","title":{"rendered":"How Greece\u2019s PM hopes to solve his election riddle"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Reuters \/Athens<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has been implementing his re-election strategy to the letter over the past six months, steering Greece out of a humiliating bailout and resolving a decades-old dispute with neighbouring Macedonia.
\nSo far, it isn\u2019t paying off.
\nWith a general election no more than eight months away, his Syriza party is far behind in opinion polls.
\nThat is despite two signature projects since last summer, evidence that the economy is climbing out of years of depression and willingness at last among investors to lend.
\nTsipras was elected as a firebrand leftist in 2015 on a promise to reject the austerity required in the bailout.
\nHe later caved in to the lenders\u2019 demands and has reinvented himself as a conformist.
\nNow, after years of austerity many ordinary voters cannot afford to keep the lights on, others are deeply indebted, and almost one in five Greeks is unemployed.
\n\u201cOur debt is huge and it\u2019s still growing, unemployment is still very high,\u201d said 30-year-old Athens resident Panagiotis, an environmentalist who works in the private sector.
\n\u201cThe crisis isn\u2019t over. That\u2019s a lie, we are not fools.\u201d
\nSources close to the prime minister say his strategy is only now reaching the point where his government can deliver on its pre-election promises and make amends for bailout pain \u2014 a plan he says aims at \u201cfair growth\u201d. Creditors released Greece from its third bailout in August, putting it back on the path to full financial independence.
\nTsipras has since used greater fiscal freedom to scrap further pension cuts, cut property and corporate taxes and ease some social security contributions.
\nHe raised the minimum wage for the first time in a decade, by 11%. He also wants to extend a reduced value-added tax regime for five islands with huge migrant arrivals in past years, and to make it easier for people to pay off pension-fund arrears and bank loans, government officials said.
\nTsipras aims to hire thousands of public-sector workers by 2020 as well as making constitutional reforms to separate the Greek Orthodox Church clearly from the state, important to left-wing voters.
\nMoves are also under way to extend Greece\u2019s western maritime boundaries to 12 miles offshore from six, two officials said.
\nThis could smooth some nationalist feathers ruffled over Macedonia and enable the creation of exclusive economic zones surrounding Greece, Albania and Italy.
\nThe latest poll by Metron Analysis, for To Vima newspaper, puts Syriza 12 points behind the conservative New Democracy, whose leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis promises to ease tax and social contributions for businesses and boost investment.
\nThe government aims to shrink that gap before European Parliament elections in May, Tsipras\u2019 first official popularity test since winning power.
\nAnalysts say he may opt for a snap vote if the gap keeps widening, though he has repeatedly ruled that out.
\nHis term expires in October.
\n\u201cWe want to showcase that Greece has returned to normality,\u201d one of the government officials said. \u201cThe aim is to shrink the gap in the EU election to be able to win a national vote later in the year.\u201d
\nHis government has a razor-thin majority in parliament, beating a censure motion last month by a single vote with support from independent lawmakers, after his right-wing coalition ally resigned over the Macedonia name accord.
\nThe neighbouring ex-Yugoslav state agreed to rename itself North Macedonia to ease Greek fears that the old name implied a sovereignty claim over its northern province of Macedonia.
\nThe deal proved unpopular for Tsipras at home, where tens of thousands of protesters condemned his decision to sanction the continued use of the word Macedonia.
\nHowever, the deal appears to have won him respect from the European Union, Greece\u2019s major bailout creditor.
\nIt opens the way for the EU to start accession talks with the Balkan state and continue the bloc\u2019s expansion eastward.
\nThe question now is whether Tsipras has built up enough goodwill with EU partners to further loosen the purse strings to win over voters.
\nDespite the end of the bailout, Athens has agreed to meet specific surplus targets, tied to potential debt relief.
\nIts lenders are also monitoring its progress to decide whether to disburse millions of euros in bond profits.
\nEurozone officials note that although Greece is expected to exceed its fiscal targets this year its reform progress is low.
\nTsipras\u2019 cabinet applauded him when he announced the minimum wage raise last week, but a meeting of eurozone deputy finance ministers gave it a cooler reaction a few days later.
\n\u201cThe atmosphere was not very positive,\u201d said a eurozone official.
\n\u201cGreece is moving back in many areas. The general political feeling is of course positive about Tsipras and what he did about Macedonia, but this is not the markets, you cannot trade one thing for the other.\u201d
\nOne eurozone official said a late February progress report on Greek reforms \u201cdid not look good\u201d. A negative EU report could unnerve markets \u2014 destabilising another plank of Tsipras\u2019 re-election strategy: the need for calm financial markets.
\nGreece successfully tapped bond markets with a five-year bond last week, its first issue post-bailout, and plans more bond issues this year.
\n\u201cThere is a fine line that Greece needs to make sure it doesn\u2019t cross,\u201d said associate director at IHS Markit Economics Diego Iscaro.\u201dMarkets understand it\u2019s a pre-election period but Athens needs to build a post-bailout reputation of reforms.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reuters \/Athens Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has been implementing his re-election strategy to the letter over the past six months, steering Greece out of a humiliating bailout and resolving a decades-old dispute…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2438,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[46,48,57,90,96,107,113,137,139,160,174,183,184,201,202,209,230,232,233,244,246,249,256,267,277,279,288],"class_list":["post-2425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-aramco","tag-athens","tag-baroudi","tag-democracy","tag-doha","tag-embargo","tag-energy-peace","tag-gas","tag-gazprom","tag-international-maritime-disputes","tag-lebanon","tag-maritime-boundaries-east-mediterranean","tag-maritime-disputes","tag-offshore","tag-oil","tag-opec","tag-poverty-alleviation","tag-putin","tag-qatar","tag-rosneft","tag-roudi","tag-russia","tag-saudi","tag-straddling-hydrocarbons-reserves","tag-total","tag-trump","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2425"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2425\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}