2015-08-24 16:32:00

Greek far-left Maverick gets mandate


(Vatican Radio) The leader of the former hard-left breakaway faction of the Greek Syriza party, Panayotis Lafazanis, received the constitutional mandate to try and form a government on Monday, four days after Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras resigned to call a snap election.

Listen to John Carr's report:

Lafazanis, whose newly-minted Popular Unity party has a bare 25 seats in the 300-seat Parliament, has virtually zero chance of getting an administration together.  But as his party is the third biggest in parliamentary strength, Greece’s President Prokopis Pavlopoulos was obliged to hand him the mandate here in Athens.

 The move jolted an already jittery Athens Stock Exchange, that shed five points during trading Monday, though the Chinese financial crisis also takes some of the blame for that.

The likeliest development is that Lafazanis will be obliged to hand back the mandate later in the week, and that is when an election date will be set – most likely for 20 September.

Tsipras remains technically the prime minister, and he is counting on his high personal popularity to carry what is left of Syriza to victory – without the burden of his obstructive left.  But sources close to Tsipras admit that it’s by no means a foregone conclusion.








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