Less than 48 hours after tense negotiations led to the passage of a new harsh austerity package, Greece Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras on Saturday reportedly "reshuffled" his administration, booting members of Syriza's leftist flank who opposed the controversial bailout.
"It marks the beginning of the end of his relationship with the extremist far-left faction," Aristides Hatzis, associate professor of law and economics at Athens University, told the Guardian. "But it is also clear that this is a short-term government. Tsipras’s hands are tied because these people still have a strong presence in his parliamentary group."
The reorganization saw nine total changes, the most notable being the ousting of outspoken Marxist Panagiotis Lafazanis from his post as energy minister. As head of Syriza's Left Platform, Lafazanis had "led the revolt against policies he said were utterly incompatible with the party’s ideology," the Guardian reports.
The Greek Parliament must pass additional reforms by Wednesday to ensure the additional bailout.
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In an interview with BBC on Saturday, Yanis Varoufakis, one of the dissenting votes who had recently stepped down from his post as Finance Minister, said Tsipras had little option but to acquiesce to the demands of the Troika banks and Eurozone officials.
"We were given a choice between being executed and capitulating," he said. "And he decided that capitulation was the optimal strategy."
Varoufakis also warned that the new reforms would "go down in history as the greatest disaster of macroeconomic management ever."
