BackTsipras hardens stand, asks Greeks to vote against bailout
Move wrecks any prospect of repairing broken relations with EU partners before a referendum on Sunday that may decide Greece's future in Europe
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Athens/Brussels: A defiant Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras urged Greeks on Wednesday to reject an international bailout deal, wrecking any prospect of repairing broken relations with EU partners before a referendum on Sunday that may decide Greece’s future in Europe.
Less than 24 hours after he wrote to creditors offering to accept their bailout offer if some conditions were changed, Tsipras repeated in a televised address his charge that Greece was being “blackmailed" and quashed rumours that he might delay or call off the vote.
The televised address added to the frantic and at times surreal atmosphere of recent days in which acrimonious messages from the leftist government have alternated with late-night offers of concessions to restart negotiations.
A day after Greece became the first advanced economy to default on the International Monetary Fund (IMF), long lines at cash machines provided a stark visual symbol of the pressure on Tsipras, who came to power in January vowing to end austerity and protect the poor.
“A ‘No’ vote is a decisive step towards a better agreement that we aim to sign right after Sunday’s result," he said, rejecting the repeated warnings from European partners that the referendum would effectively be a vote on whether Greece stays in the euro or returns to the drachma.
European Council president Donald Tusk retorted in a tweet: “Europe wants to help Greece. But cannot help anyone against their own will. Let’s wait for the results of the Greek referendum."
Euro zone finance ministers were discussing the Greek request on a conference call and Tsipras said he would respond “immediately" to any positive signals.
“The Greek government will remain at the negotiating table until the end and will be there on Monday as well," he said.
But the head of the Eurogroup, Jeroen Dijsselbloem said he saw “little chance" of progress after Tsipras’s latest comments.
Global financial markets have reacted remarkably calmly to the widely anticipated Greek default, strengthening the hand of hardline euro zone partners who say Athens cannot use the threat of contagion to weaker European sovereigns as a bargaining chip.
The lack of panic or contagion to other euro markets stood in marked contrast to 2011, when the Greek crisis was perceived as a threat to the future of the single currency.
In a letter to creditors seen by Reuters, Tsipras agreed to accept most of their demands for taxes and pension cuts and asked for a €29 billion loan to cover all debt service payments in the next two years.
However even if negotiations do restart after the referendum, Germany and others made clear that any talks on a new programme would have to start from scratch with different conditions.
The exasperated tone to public comments of European leaders exhausted by the chaotic turnarounds of the past few days offered little hope of a breakthrough.
“This government has done nothing since it came into office," German finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said in a speech in the lower house of parliament.
On the third day of a bank closure, the costs of the capital controls were biting deeper, with long lines forming at many ATMs and limited amounts of cash being doled out to pensioners. Reuters
Lefteris Karagiannopoulos in Athens, Mike Dolan in London, Michelle Martin, Madeline Chambers and Gernot Heller in Berlin contributed to this story.
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