Greek Parliament Passes Bailout Agreement

Greece΄s parliament passed the bailout deal, by a comfortable 222 margin in favor and 64 voting against. Another 14 MPs abstained or were absent. The vote, however, has further widened the rift within the ruling Syriza party and may well hasten early elections in Greece.

Syriza suffered a major, if foreseen, rebellion in Friday΄s vote, with 32 out of its 149 MPs voting against the agreement with creditors negotiated by Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, and another 11 Syriza deputies abstaining. Among those in Syriza΄s parliamentary group who voted "no" to the deal was Yanis Varoufakis, Greece΄s verbose former finance minister.
The 300-member parliament passed the bill through the support of many opposition MPs from center-right and center-left parties.

Dissenters in Syriza have previously voted against Mr. Tsipras over measures to secure the bailout, but the scale of Friday΄s revolt was the biggest yet. Once Greece has secured financing to repay EUR3.2 billion ($3.5 billion) of bonds held by the European Central Bank that fall due on Aug. 20, Mr. Tsipras is considering a vote of confidence to shore up his government for now, government officials say.
The all-day-and-night parliamentary debate was one of the most exhausting of Greece΄s five-year debt crisis for participants and watchers, thanks to interminable procedural wrangling prompted in large part by Syriza member and parliament president Zoe Konstantopoulou. Ms. Konstantopoulou, a high-profile opponent of the bailout program, resisted for hours on Thursday night the government΄s efforts to speed the bill΄s passage through parliament, and eventually announced she no longer supports the Prime Minister.