Constitutional review backfires, turning up heat on PM

With early elections looking increasingly likely in May, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras's push for a constitutional review to bolster his center-left credentials and rally his party could well backfire if recent developments are any indication.

The government launched the process in the belief that the public debate on the constitutional review could work in its favor as a way to highlight its differences with the conservative New Democracy opposition and make inroads to the center ground of the political spectrum. However, the results of Thursday's preliminary parliamentary vote on which articles of the constitution will be revised by the next House that will be sworn in after this year's general elections showed that ruling SYRIZA failed in this objective.

This failure was particularly highlighted by the rejection of its flagship proposal to review Article 30 so that...