And another one

WHEN in doubt, call an election, goes a Greek political adage. It is as valid as ever. After only seven months in power, Alexis Tsipras, the prime minister, resigned on August 20th with the intention of winning a new mandate. The move followed a revolt by hardline legislators in his leftwing Syriza party over austerity measures, wiping out Mr Tsipras’s majority in parliament. Greeks will vote for the sixth time in eight years on September 20th or 27th.

It makes political sense for Mr Tsipras to seek a new mandate right away rather than try to limp on. Austerity measures imposed by European creditors will start to bite in October, after which governing may become even trickier.

The creditors have mostly supported the return to the polls even if it increases short-term uncertainty. In any case, they intend to drip-feed aid only when the measures Mr Tsipras signed up to have been implemented.

The most recent opinion polls show Syriza leading the centre-right New Democracy party by 24% to 22%, an unexpectedly narrow margin; some 15% of voters are undecided. Polls conducted before the austerity package was agreed put Syriza at 33-35%, close to the 36.3% it won at elections in January.

Syriza’s rebel faction, led by Panagiotis Lafazanis, once a senior official in the Greek communist party and until recently Mr Tsipras’s energy minister, quickly transformed itself into a new political party named Popular Unity. It includes 25 MPs from the outgoing parliament and will probably pull in at least one-third of the members of Syriza’s 200-strong central committee, say party insiders.

Mr Lafazanis will campaign for an exit from the euro and the reintroduction of the drachma. Some 25% of Greeks favour such a move, claim Popular Unity officials. The recent poll puts support for Popular Unity at 4.5%. Yanis Varoufakis, the outspoken former finance minister turned international anti-austerity guru, has declined to join the party.

Mr Tsipras is hoping that the brevity of the campaign will favour him. The opposition is incoherent, and thanks to a quirk of Greek law governing elections held within 12 months of the previous one, he as his party’s leader gets to choose all its candidates. Two months of capital controls, which restrict daily cash withdrawals to €60, and a stagnating economy have not destroyed Mr Tsipras’s personal appeal. Even though he could not escape austerity measures, “he put up a terrific fight against the Germans in the negotiations [and] that made people feel better,” says Aristides Fenios, a garage owner. Most analysts, though, think that Syriza will fall short of an overall majority (it won 149 out of 300 parliamentary seats in January), forcing it into a coalition.

Greece’s reward for adhering to the new creditor-imposed programme, say officials, will be access to billions of euros in the new funds, a carrot offered by the European Commission which may help speed a return to sustained economic growth from 2016. Greece would also be eligible for additional funds from the European Central Bank’s quantitative-easing fund to stimulate growth, which Ireland and Portugal have already qualified for after successfully completing their own bail-out programmes. But weary Greeks will have to put up with more voting first.