Tsipras fights to avert Syriza party split

(Vatican Radio)  Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is working to hold his Syriza party together amid mounting dissent from its far left wing.

Listen to John Carr's report:

Temperatures are nudging 40 degrees in Athens this week, and so is the political temperature, as Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras works the backrooms and committees of his Syriza party to try and avert a mutiny by the party’s hard left.

Officials close to Tsipras said he intends to call a national Syriza convention in September to cleanse the party of its dissident Marxist-oriented Europhobe wing and reassert his pro-Europe leadership.

The dissident wing, known as the Left Platform, made a dynamic showing here in Athens this week, as its standard-bearer, ex-energy minister Panayotis Lafazanis, addressed cheering crowds.  He urged public discussion of what he called a taboo subject in Greece – a possible return to the drachma.

Lafazanis controls an influential website called Iskra, which is Russian for Spark, and refers to the propaganda journal that Lenin issued before seizing power in the Bolshevik Revolution.  Lafazanis himself is a former Greek Communist Party member.

Meanwhile, according to an initial assessment by Greece’s creditors this week, there has been an uptick in state revenues, which means that Greece’s economy could shrink by some 3 percent this year, which is less than what was feared.