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 A first set of reforms that focused largely on tax hikes and budget
discipline triggered a rebellion in his party last week and passed
only thanks to votes from pro-EU opposition parties.
The bill lawmakers will vote on late on Wednesday covers rules for
dealing with failed banks and speeding up the justice system -- two
more conditions set by the euro zone and IMF to open negotiations on
a 86 billion euro rescue loan.
The legislation is all but certain to pass, despite planned
protests, after opposition parties said they would back it.
But with divisions in Tsipras' leftist Syriza party laid bare by
last week's rebellion by 39 deputies, Wednesday's vote will be
closely monitored to see if he loses even more support.
"We are making an effort to have fewer dissenters," Health Minister
Panagiotis Kouroumplis told Greek television.
He said there were doubts about whether the new measures could pull
the recession-hit economy out of its impasse. "But since we agreed,
we must implement them."
The government hopes negotiations on the bailout deal can start this
week and be wrapped up by Aug. 20.
"It's extremely important to wrap up this prior actions procedure so
that we can start negotiations on Friday," Finance Minister Euclid
Tsakalotos told lawmakers as they began debating the bill.
Together with his coalition partners from the right-wing nationalist
Independent Greeks, Tsipras has 162 seats in the 300-seat
parliament. But last week's rebellion cut his support to just 123
votes and government officials have said elections are likely in the
autumn.
"Rendezvous in September," the pro-Syriza Avgi newspaper wrote on
its front page, saying a party congress was likely then, with
elections lurking in the background.
"Possibly, we will go to elections when this is needed," government
spokeswoman Olga Gerovasili told Greek radio. "Right now, this won't
be useful. It's more important that the country returns to a kind of
normality," she said.
Tsipras himself has said he disagrees with the measures demanded by
Greece's euro zone peers and other international creditors for talks
to proceed on a third bailout to save the country from bankruptcy.
But after he made a U-turn by accepting a deal at the 11th hour to
keep his country in the euro, he told party hardliners on Tuesday
they, too, should face reality and back the package.
"Up until today I've seen reactions, I've read heroic statements but
I haven't heard any alternative proposal," he told Syriza officials
on Tuesday, warning that party hardliners could not ignore the
desire of most Greeks to stay in the euro.
PROTEST RALLIES
In first signs of a return to normality, Greek banks reopened on
Monday and Athens paid debts due to the European Central Bank and
International Monetary Fund. On Tuesday, Standard & Poor's upgraded
Greece's sovereign credit rating by two notches, saying the
country's liquidity perspective has improved with bailout talks.
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But fresh austerity measures are hard to accept in a country whose
economy has contracted by a quarter during five years of crisis and
where unemployment is more than 25 percent. The main public sector
union ADEDY, the communist-affiliated party PAME and
anti-establishment groups have called rallies for Wednesday.
"We will continue our battle so that the new barbaric bailout does
not pass and is overturned," ADEDY said in a statement, urging
Greeks to rally against "a neocolonial control" of the country by
the EU and the IMF.
Anti-austerity rallies last week briefly turned violent when masked
youths hurled petrol bombs at police as lawmakers were debating the
first bailout bill.
With mistrust among euro zone countries still high despite the deal
struck last week to launch bailout talks, a senior German lawmaker
in Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative party warned Greece it
would not get aid if it backtracked on reform commitments.
"We are keeping a close eye on whether Athens not only adopts the
reforms, but also implements them," Gunther Krichbaum, chairman of
the German parliament's Europe committee, told the newspaper Bild.
"Greece must fulfill the conditions, otherwise the money cannot
flow."
The bill to be passed on Wednesday adopts into Greek law new
European Union rules on dealing with failed banks, imposing losses
on shareholders and creditors of ailing lenders before any
taxpayers' money can be tapped in a bank rescue.
It also deals with sensitive issues affecting forced home
foreclosures, which banks have committed not to proceed with before
the end of the year.
However it will not include pension reforms curbing early retirement
or increasing tax rates paid by farmers from 13 percent to a range
of 26-33 percent to cut out abuses - a step strongly opposed by the
conservative New Democracy party.
Tsakalotos told lawmakers Greece had agreed with its lenders to push
back the issue of pension reforms and deal with them during the
bailout talks.
(Reporting by Costas Pitas, Angeliki Koutantou and Renee Maltezou;
Writing by Ingrid Melander; Editing by Catherine Evans and Paul
Taylor)
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