Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras resigned on Thursday, hoping to strengthen his hold on power in snap elections after seven months in office in which he fought the country’s creditors for a better bailout deal but had to cave in.
Tsipras submitted his resignation to President Prokopis Pavlopoulos and asked for the earliest possible election date.
Government officials said the aim was to hold the election on Sept. 20, with #Tsipras seeking to crush a rebellion in his leftist Syriza party and seal public support for the bailout programme, Greece’s third since 2010, that he negotiated.
“I will go the president of the republic shortly to submit my resignation, as well as the resignation of my government,” Tsipras said in a televised address before he met Pavlopoulos.
Faced with a near collapse of the Greek financial system which threatened the country’s future in the euro, Tsipras was forced to accept the creditors’ demands for yet more austerity and economic reform – the very policies he had promised to scrap when he was elected in January.
“I want to be honest with you. We did not achieve the agreement we expected before the January elections,” he told the Greek people.
“I feel the deep ethical and political responsibility to put to your judgement all I have done, successes and failures.”
His decision deepens political uncertainty on the day Greece began receiving funds under its 86 billion-euro (62 billion pounds) bailout programme, five years after a previous government took the first bailout from the euro zone and IMF
