The strategies of political leaders ahead of their meeting at the Presidential Mansion

The awaited Monday meeting of the political leaders will be headed by the President of the Republic, Karolos Papoulias and shall take place at the Presidential Mansion. It has been convened so that all party chiefs can try and find a solution to the impasse Greece has entered due to the lack of agreement among them over forming a government, and talks are to begin from point zero.

At the moment there is not a great deal of latitude, but the remaining room for discussions lies among Antonis Samaras (ND), Evangelos Venizelos (PASOK), Fotis Kouvelis (Democratic Left) and Alexis Tsipras (SYRIZA).

Thus, the agenda each one of them is to present at the meeting appears to be of great interest.

Samaras, Venizelos and Kouvelis seem to have already agreed on the formation of a national government in order to keep Greece safe inside the Eurozone and gradually extricate the country from the memorandum by 2014.

The initiative belongs to Kouvelis, who has insisted on SYRIZA’s governmental participation. Moreover, he has made clear that without SYRIZA “no national scheme can exist”.

On the other hand, Tsipras says “no” to working with such a government, explaining it is not a national solution but a “national implementation of the memorandum”.

Additionally, SYRIZA people highlight that “word games regarding the re-negotiation of the memorandum conditions” must stop. According to them, “these games are communicative tricks” and, at some point, they should all sit down and talk about the real problems.

According to information, in front of the Greek President Tsipras will ask Samaras and Venizelos to explain if they are going to implement the memorandum or not and whether they are planning to take further austerity measures.

The answer is expected to be that first and foremost, they need to form a government and afterwards see how much room there is to re-negotiate the terms and conditions of the memorandum, since the country cannot wait a minute longer.