RSN Fundraising Banner
FB Share
Email This Page
add comment
Print

Excerpt: "Voting is under way in a crucial referendum that will decide whether or not Greeks choose to accept international creditors' proposals for more austerity in exchange for rescue loans needed to avoid default and a banking collapse."

Greece's Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras. (photo: Thanassis Stavrakis/AP)
Greece's Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras. (photo: Thanassis Stavrakis/AP)


Greek Bailout Referendum Down to the Wire

By Al Jazeera America

05 July 15

 

Voters to decide whether or not to accept creditors' proposals for more austerity in exchange for rescue loans.

oting is under way in a crucial referendum that will decide whether or not Greeks choose to accept international creditors' proposals for more austerity in exchange for rescue loans needed to avoid default and a banking collapse.

Polling booths opened at 7am local time (04:00 GMT) on Sunday, with opinion polls showing the nation of 11 million people evenly split between "Yes" and "No" vote. The first projected result is expected at 9pm local time.

There are 10 million Greeks eligible to vote.

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has urged people to vote "No", saying it would strengthen his left-wing government's hand in talks with international creditors who are owed billions of euros.

Tsipras remained steadfast after casting his vote at a polling station in Athens on Sunday morning.

"No one can ignore the message of determination of a people taking its destiny in its own hands," he told reporters.

Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis has also cast his ballot, telling the Germany's Bild newspaper that he will resign if Greeks vote 'yes' for the aid-for-reforms package, reiterating comments he has made before.

Asked if he would really resign if the outcome of the referendum was 'yes', he told Bild: "Absolutely."

"There will not be a majority for 'yes'," he added.

On Friday, more than 25,000 people welcomed Tsipras at a rally in Athens where he sought to revive support for the "No" vote.

A rival rally of 22,000 "Yes" supporters shouted pro-European slogans and voiced fears of a so-called "Grexit" from the eurozone and a return to Greece's former currency, the drachma, if Tsipras got his way.

In an opinion poll released on Friday, Greeks were almost evenly split over the referendum, with 41.5 percent saying they will vote in favour of accepting the latest bailout proposals and 40.2 percent saying they will vote "No".

The poll showed that 10.9 percent remained undecided, while the rest said they would abstain or leave their ballots blank.

After failing to reach a deal with its creditors last weekend on an extension of its bailout programme Greece's ruling Syriza government closed the country's banks and imposed capital controls until July 6.

The cash-strapped nation defaulted on an IMF payment of $1.8bn on June 30.

There have been rallies in Dublin and Istanbul in support of the Greek government ahead of the key vote.

Hundreds of demonstrators also marched in the Portuguese capital, Lisbon, to show their solidarity with Athens' efforts to fight the proposed austerity measures.

Portugal, like Greece, had to ask for an international bailout in 2011 to avoid bankruptcy.

After two bailouts totalling 240bn euros ($266bn) and six years of depression, spending cuts and lost jobs, Greece teeters on the edge of collapse.

Tsipras says the vote is needed to force creditors to finally accept his key demand of another round of debt relief to save Greece from financial meltdown and possibly crashing out of the euro.

EU leaders have warned that a "No" victory could cause Greece to crash out of the eurozone.

"If they [Greeks] say 'No', they will have to introduce another currency after the referendum because the euro is not available as a means of payment," Martin Schulz, the president of the European Parliament, said in remarks broadcast on Germany's Deutschlandfunk radio on Sunday.

European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker warned in Brussels that Greece's negotiating position would be "dramatically weakened" in the event of a "No" - and still difficult even in the event of a "Yes" vote.

But Tsipras and his closest ally Varoufakis have accused them of fearmongering.

In an interview published on Saturday the Varoufakis accused international creditors of "terrorism".

"What Brussels and the troika want today is for the "Yes" [vote] to win so they could humiliate the Greeks," Varoufakis told the Spanish El Mundo daily.

FIELD NOTES FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT

Athens, Greece - Much is at stake here for Greece, including whether banks will reopen this week as announced, or whether the country will be forced to dip into savings in order to prop itself up.

We don't know if the government will receive another financial aid package and we don't know what the fate of the private sector will be.

All of this comes down to a simple "No" or "Yes" vote in today's referendum.

The ballot simply asks: Do you accept the package of reforms submitted by creditors on June 25 and the debt sustainability analysis that goes with it? That is all.

There is a lot of domestic politics riding on those two answers.

In reality, the Greeks are not going to be voting on the specifics, they are going to be voting on their emotions and what they have been through over the past six years.

The referendum is going to be a very blunt instrument for this voting public to express their broader hopes for the future.


e-max.it: your social media marketing partner
Email This Page

 

THE NEW STREAMLINED RSN LOGIN PROCESS: Register once, then login and you are ready to comment. All you need is a Username and a Password of your choosing and you are free to comment whenever you like! Welcome to the Reader Supported News community.

RSNRSN