Thursday, July 2, 2015

Greek Finance Minister Says He’ll Resign if Referendum Endorses Bailout

 Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis of Greece said on Thursday that he would resign immediately if Greeks voting in a referendum on Sunday endorse efforts to secure an international bailout deal for the country.

NYT concludes:
His comment is the starkest sign yet that the government of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is likely to be reshuffled or could even fall if a yes vote prevails....
If Greeks instead vote yes, it would signal their desire to accept the bailout with austerity conditions that Mr. Tsipras has been pushing against, and it would effectively be a repudiation of Mr. Tsipras and his government’s negotiating strategy. That could lead not only to to Mr. Varoufakis’s resignation but also to the withdrawal of numerous other government members from Mr. Tsipras’s leftist Syriza party — and possibly of Mr. Tsipras himself.

I made this same point on Tuesday:
The Sunday referendum in Greece for all practical purposes should be considered a vote on the current Syriza government. If the Greek  Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras does not get the "No" vote he is asking for on the referendum to reject a recent Eurogroup bailout proposal that includes higher taxes and cuts in government pension payouts, then the Tsipras government will likely collapse.

 -RW

1 comment:

  1. Isn't that how it should work? A government party or coalition comes into power because of an issue they claim is of supreme importance (granted that the grexit issue is much more pressing that most political issues), yet when they don't get their way once in power, they continue as if nothing happened.
    ALL governments should fold when their raison d'être goes down the crapper.

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