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The next three weeks will be decisive. To pay out more than €1.7bn in pensions and salaries at the end of April, and to make a €186m repayment to the IMF due on May 6, Mr Tsipras’s only option will be to raid the remaining cash reserves of Greek state entities such as local councils and social security funds.
After that, there will not be enough money to meet a €707m IMF bill due on May 12, let alone to pay next month’s salaries and pensions. This suggests that the crucial moment in the creditor talks may be a eurozone finance ministers’ meeting in Brussels on May 11.
An interim deal is possible. It would require Greece to implement the least contentious measures demanded by the creditors — not labour market or pension reform but, for example, legally enshrined independence for the tax authority in Greece’s finance ministry.
In return, out of €7.2bn in bailout funds that have been held up since last year, Greece could be given €1.9bn — representing profits made by the European Central Bank from buying Greek bonds after the first rescue of May 2010.
Such a fix might pave the way for a longer-term settlement, involving up to €25bn-€30bn in new financial aid, by the end of June. But the basic logic of assistance in return for economic reform would remain unaltered, meaning that Mr Tsipras would still have to confront his party’s ultra-leftists.
In northern Greece stands a limestone and concrete sculpture, the Zalongo monument, which honours Greek women villagers who in 1803 threw their children and themselves off a cliff rather than be captured and enslaved by Ottoman forces. According to legend, they sang and danced to their deaths.
The world is watching to see if Mr Tsipras and his Syriza colleagues plan to re-enact the Dance of Zalongo.
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