ATHENS — The ascendant leader of a left-wing party on Friday rejected calls to join a unity government, pushing Greece closer to new elections in a climate in which it is becoming increasingly difficult for any party to enforce Greece’s debt deal with foreign creditors.
Alexis Tsipras, the leader of the Coalition of the Radical Left, or Syriza, said joining the proposed government would betray his party’s rejection of the debt deal, which was accepted by two of the parties that would be his partners.
The political scrambling follows elections on Sunday in which no party took a majority, but Syriza did well enough to begin to change the debate over the tough and deeply unpopular austerity measures approved to win foreign aid.
President Karolos Papoulias will now summon the leaders of all the parties in Parliament in a last-ditch effort to broker a coalition and avoid a second round of elections.
“The rejection of this proposal does not come from Syriza; it came from the Greek people,” Mr. Tsipras said in a televised statement referring to the large number of voters who supported anti-austerity parties.
Mr. Tsipras had been asked to join a unity government by the Socialist leader Evangelos Venizelos, the former finance minister who negotiated Greece’s $170 billion loan deal with foreign creditors. Mr. Venizelos was the third party leader asked to try to form a new government after the election on Sunday. He had already drawn in the conservative New Democracy Party and the Democratic Left Party, a moderate left-wing party. But the Democratic Left said it would be part of a government only if Syriza joined.
Mr. Tsipras called on the two parties that had supported the bailout deal, the Socialists, known as Pasok, and New Democracy, to “stop playing with words” and state outright whether they would curb austerity measures in a new government.
“Will it insist on cutting wages and pensions, yes or no? Will it insist on sacking thousands of people from civil service, yes or no?” he said, referring to the proposed coalition. “It’s as if New Democracy and Pasok did not understand the outcome of the elections.”
Mr. Tsipras described the proposed coalition partners as “three parties asking for implementation of debt deal with a left-wing alibi,” and called on Fotis Kouvelis, the Democratic Left leader, to keep his pledge not to join an alliance that excludes Syriza.
Putting his rivals on the spot, Mr. Tsipras added of the loan agreement that “no government is entitled to implement it.”
Since his party placed second behind New Democracy and bested the Socialists in Sunday’s election, Mr. Tsipras has helped shift the debate to the point that the two parties are starting to call for a renegotiation of the loan agreement, responding to the popular groundswell.
After its election loss, the Socialist Party, which led the country from 2009 until Prime Minister George A. Papandreou stepped down last fall, is in disarray.
At a party meeting on Friday, Mr. Venizelos said the party “had rotted” and needed to be rebuilt, suggesting that a new and younger leadership would revive it. Polls indicate that Syriza, whose leader is 37 years old, would place first in new elections.
As he worked in his family’s cafe in Athens, Nikos Palavitsinis, 29, said he had voted for Syriza and admired Mr. Tsipras’s grit. “It’s the easiest thing for New Democracy and Pasok to put them on the spot,” he said. “But Tsipras was honest. He kept his word.”
A growing chorus of critics fear that if Syriza were to come to power and Greece failed to honor its international commitments, Europe would lose patience and stop lending the country money, prompting it to default and exit the euro zone.
Without a “credible government,” said Aristos Doxiades, a venture capitalist and economist, “I think there will be default.”
“I don’t think the Europeans will give us more than a couple of months’ leeway,” he added.
Yet after an election in which Greek voters roundly rejected Europe’s program for the country, others question the dichotomy of reform versus default.
“I don’t think anybody wants an exit from the euro zone, and this is the dilemma — the pseudodilemma that’s been presented — that if you negotiate anything, this means an exit from the euro,” said Louka Katseli, a former economy and labor minister under Mr. Papandreou. “This is a zero-sum kind of positioning which is not realistic and not valid.”
If the president’s attempts to form a governing coalition fail — the most likely outcome — he must appoint a caretaker government and call new elections within 30 days.
There are fears that a new round of elections will fuel social discontent as well as interfere with a series of important deadlines set up by the bailout deal. Apart from paying a bond that comes due in May, Greece must identify $14.8 billion in spending cuts for 2013 and 2014, equivalent to 5.5 percent of Greece’s gross domestic product, and complete a recapitalization of its cash-starved banks.
