Greek reforms in balance as voters ponder left-wing turn

ATHENS: Greece on Sunday heads into a general election that could sweep the anti-austerity Syriza party to power and determine whether the country remains in the eurozone.

After a six-year recession in which the national output shrank by a quarter, Greeks are being called on to determine whether to stick with spending cuts demanded by their international creditors, or demand a new deal on the country's huge debts.

The election -- the second in three years -- comes with Greece still locked in talks with its EU-IMF creditors for a 7.2-billion-euro ($8.3-billion) tranche of bailout loans the state needs to stay afloat.

Syriza, who have a steady lead in opinion polls over conservative New Democracy -- the party formerly in government -- want to redraft the EU-IMF bailout which they say has brought nothing but misery for the past five years.

They intend to erase over 50 percent of Greece's 318-billion-euro debt, and divert funds that are currently being used to repay state bonds to help the country's economic recovery instead.

The leftists also pledge to raise salaries and pensions, halt layoffs and freeze the privatisation of state assets -- in other words, abandon key elements of reforms demanded by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund.

"The path we have chosen demands determination, conviction and resolution for major confrontation," the party's 40-year-old leader Alexis Tsipras told a closing rally in Athens on Thursday.

"We will not hesitate, we will not be afraid, we will not turn back," he told the crowd.

The party maintains that Greece's creditors will agree to renegotiate the bailout when faced with a leftist government elected with a strong popular mandate.

"As of Monday, we will have a government with its own programme, not the copy of a programme imposed by the Europeans," the party's senior economist Giannis Dragasakis told To Vima radio this week.

Such talk has sparked concern among officials in the European Union, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund, who are mindful that Greece benefited from a drastic debt cut just two years ago.

IMF chief Christine Lagarde on Monday warned that to renegotiate debt carried "consequences" for the countries attempting it.

"Collective endeavours are welcome but at the same time a debt is a debt and it is a contract," Lagarde told the Irish Times during a visit to Dublin.