Tsipras: Government majority secure

Amid discussion of future losses to the party, Tsipras denied that there could be elections soon. An important difference that he believes distinguishes this administration from other bailout governments is that these last elections happened right after the difficult bailout agreement.
“I feel quite secure with 153 seats and it’s not my aim or intention to broaden my government,” the Greek prime minister said on Monday on state television. “It’s only two months, after all, since we received a new popular mandate.”
The 90-minute live interview was the first the premier has given since his leftwing Syriza party won a second term at a general election in September and unexpectedly chose to govern with the small rightwing Independent Greeks party, the Financial Times reports.
The premier said he wanted “a dialogue with opposition parties that would result in a broad-based consensus on critical issues”, such as the pensions overhaul, which is due to be agreed before bailout monitors begin their first progress review next month.
Mr Tsipras claimed that Greece was sticking to the terms of the latest bailout deal and had already “rounded several of the most difficult headlands” on the course to economic recovery.
“A Grexit [from the euro] is no longer on the table,” he said. “And all the banks have survived, they’ve been successfully recapitalised and with a very significant participation of private investors.”
Mr Tsipras said that a €600m deficit in the state pension system could be plugged by “a small increase” in employers’ contributions and by cutting supplementary benefits to avoid across-the-board reductions.
“Our position is that main pensions can’t be touched — they’ve been reduced 11 times by previous governments. But it’s a difficult balance: we have to create more jobs but we can’t stage another raid on pensioners.”
Showing a brief flash of his firebrand self, Mr Tsipras took aim at the IMF, saying its position on Greece was “not constructive” the FT add.
“The fund has to decide whether it wants to stay in the [Greek] programme and, if it doesn’t want to compromise, it should say so publicly,” he said.