Greek election - January 25th 2015

[Bacon King]

The more I think about it, the more I believe Tsipras knew exactly what he was doing by immediately seeking support from ANEL. This sent an immediate signal to the world that his government will take a hard and uncompromising line against austerity, and that he intends to be negotiating with Europe from a position of strength. An alliance with ANEL will prevent critics from being able to make a traditional "left vs. right" issue out of it, and instead he can claim to be leading a movement that's so important that it transcends traditional partisan boundaries. Also if he takes a hard stance against the troika he'll have an easier time keeping both ANEL and his own party in line- if they're playing hardball with Europe, nobody in that coalition is going to vote for new elections while the stakes are so high.

I'm not sure if this will work in the slightest but I definitely see the method to the madness

[Bacon King]

It's very amusing that both Le Pen and Melenchon publicly congratulated Tsipras after the election

[Bacon King]

I'd like to hear the resident experts on Greece thoughts about the Prokopis Pavlopoulos nomination for president. A former Karamanlis minister and 20-year MP seems a bit tainted, if only by association, with the politics Syriza is supposed to be leaving behind.

I assume that with Syriza, ANEL and ND behind him, Pavlopoulos is as good as elected, but feel free to correct me.

Pavlopolous has been elected now with 233 votes

Several reasons Tsipras picked him:

1. At this point there's still an 180 vote threshold required for electing the President, so an opposition party supporting the government's presidential candidate was necessary to let Parliament start doing real stuff instead of spending a week holding more presidential votes

2. This olive branch to ND plays into Tsipras' desire to frame the narrative that SYRIZA is sort of a "Greek national unity government" in opposition to the troika and etc.

3.  Pavlopolous was apparently a bit of a maverick within the ND, speaking out against the memorandum

4. The Presidency is ceremonial and the office's actual powers are obligatory actions the Constitution requires the President to take no matter what

The real big thing to notice was that Tsipras had to delay the vote for a full week to get his own party in line behind the candidate. Electing a conservative was hard for SYRIZA's left to swallow.

 There's also the fact that back when the Golden Dawn MP punched a KKE politician on a talk show, Pavlopolous was literally sitting between them but didn't do anything to stop the punch and just watched it happen