Financial Times
July 4, 2015
What happens if Greece votes Yes in Sunday’s referendum? Will the country’s future in the eurozone be secure? Unfortunately not, in part because Greece’s pro-European forces are so divided that they will struggle to gain power.
It is true that a Yes vote would probably lead to the resignation of Alexis Tsipras, the radical left prime minister who is campaigning for No. There would then probably be a new election because it would be tricky to put together a pro-European coalition from the current parliament.
Even if the three pro-European parties — New Democracy, To Potami and Pasok — collectively won more votes in that election than Mr Tsipras’s Syriza group, they could easily fail to get a majority in the 300-member parliament. This is because, under Greek law, the party with the largest number of votes gets a 50-seat bonus. If Syriza emerged as the largest single party, it might end up still in government or, at least, able to block the pro-Europeans.
The way to avoid this is for the opposition to join forces. They would then probably get the 50-seat bonus and be able to form a government. The snag is that, despite several months of talks, they cannot agree on how such an arrangement would work and who would be the candidate for prime minister.
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