Greek Opposition Leader Urges Lawmakers to Vote Against Government – Urban Christian News

Greece’s main opposition leader urged lawmakers Saturday to support his no-confidence vote against the government over a deal to end a decades-old dispute with neighboring Macedonia over the latter’s name.

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’ left-led coalition government is expected to survive the vote, set for later Saturday. His government controls 154 of parliament’s 300 seats. The nationalist party that is a junior coalition partner says it will reject the motion despite vehemently opposing the name deal that Tsipras reached with his Macedonian counterpart.

“Today you are all mortgaging the future of the country,” said conservative New Democracy party leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who brought the no-confidence motion.

Defense Minister Panos Kammenos, who heads the junior coalition partner, the Independent Greeks party, stressed that Saturday’s vote was not on the Macedonia name deal itself, which his party opposes.

“Today we are not voting on the deal,” he said.

Tsipras and Macedonia’s Zoran Zaev settled on a deal Tuesday that would rename Greece’s northern neighbor North Macedonia, while Athens would drop its objections to the country joining NATO and the European Union.

The agreement aimed to end a bitter dispute that has roiled the two countries’ relations since shortly after the small country declared independence from Yugoslavia in 1991. Greece argued that the name “Macedonia” implied territorial claims on its province of the same name, which is the birthplace of the ancient warrior king Alexander the Great, and usurped its ancient Greek heritage…