Ruling Radical Left Coalition (SYRIZA) party will hold its congress in September, its central committee decided after a 12-hour-long meeting on Thursday night.

Roughly 200 members of the central committee voted against the proposal to carry out the congress immediately. The postponement merely shifts the problem of dealing with the party’s far-left dissenters until after talks with creditors over a third bailout package conclude.

The matters expected to be put up for discussion in the September conference are:

1. An account of the government’s governance and its performance in the negotiations with EU creditors

2. What should be done under the current circumstances

3. The position of the Left in Europe

The meeting on Thursday could have run for three hours but it ended shortly after midnight at a central Athens movie theater. The atmosphere was tense and the views so diverse that the party’s split seems unavoidable.

A number of viewpoints were expressed, some of them utterly controversial, with the leader of the virulently anti-capitalist Left Platform, now ex-minister Panagiotis Lafazanis, defining the Greek political system as a “euro dictatorship”. He was one of those who criticized the prime minister for his U-turn in negotiations.

Brash Parliament President Zoe Konstantopoulou, another “thorn” in the side of her own government, said  SYRIZA shouldn’t vote on a new bailout because the people had depended on the party to “abolish bailout agreements.” She pointed out that SYRIZA had been elected on a campaign promise to end austerity.

Sources point to three MPs planned to join the 17 members of the committee who had resigned earlier.