[D66] Greek prime minister calls for referendum on EU austeritydemands

[Henk Vreekamp]

Daar ben ik het helemaal mee eens, Ernst. China en Rusland wachten rustig af 
of Merkel de fout maakt om Griekenland te lozen door niet meer (event. 
zonder de omweg via Athene) subsidie te verlenen aan die Europese banken die 
schuldeiser zijn van Griekenland. In Nederland de ING, bijv. Dan zijn we 
behalve die miljarden banksubsidies/garanties/leningen ook nog de miljarden 
kwijt die de Europese boycot tegen Rusland ons belastingbetalers inmiddels 
heeft gekost.

Komt Europa sterk verzwakt uit de neoliberale Financiele Warme Oorlog anno 
de 2010s. En intussen koerst Turkije langzaam af op een islamistische 
schurkenstaat. De Politiek en de Poen in de Zuidoost-flank staan op 
springen...

hv,u

-----------

-----Oorspronkelijk bericht----- 
From: Ernst Debets
Sent: Saturday, June 27, 2015 1:38 PM
To: 'informele D66 discussielijst'
Subject: Re: [D66] Greek prime minister calls for referendum on EU 
austeritydemands

Tsipras en Varoufakis houden gewoon de schijn op. Ze weten donders best dat 
de EU en de Eurogroep Griekenland van z'n never nooit kwijt wil. De reden 
daarvoor is uiterst simpel: Duitsland en Frankrijk zullen nooit toestaan dat 
er ook maar een EU/Euroland door dit soort fratsen in de armen van Czaar 
Wladimir I, of erger nog in de armen van Beijing gedreven wordt. Tsipras 
heeft dankzij het geopolitieke belang van Griekenland de EU in een houdgreep 
waar een Japanse top-judoka jaloers op zou worden.

Ernst Debets/
Zaanstad

-----Oorspronkelijk bericht-----
Van: D66 [mailto:d66-bounces at tuxtown.net] Namens J.N.
Verzonden: zaterdag 27 juni 2015 12:18
Aan: informele D66 discussielijst
Onderwerp: [D66] Greek prime minister calls for referendum on EU austerity 
demands

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/06/27/gree-j27.html

Greek prime minister calls for referendum on EU austerity demands By Robert 
Stevens and Alex Lantier
27 June 2015

Early this morning, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras called a July 5 
referendum in Greece, on whether to approve a package of austerity measures 
demanded by the European Union (EU) in exchange for extending loans to avert 
Greek state bankruptcy.

Tsipras’s proposal came after talks in Brussels between EU and Greek 
officials collapsed again amid bitter recriminations. Having already agreed 
to impose billions of euros in social cuts, Greek officials refused to agree 
to new austerity measures, including deep pension cuts, demanded by the EU, 
the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Central Bank (ECB). 
Greek Labor Minister Dimitris Stratoulis denounced the EU’s demands as 
“complete humiliation” for the Greek government and the “enslavement and 
extermination” of the Greek people.

The EU’s demands amount to an order to Tsipras to completely and openly 
repudiate the results of this January’s elections in Greece, which his 
Syriza party won based on pledges to end EU austerity. German Chancellor 
Angela Merkel and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte reportedly told Tsipras to 
“shut up” over dinner Thursday night, as he asked for more time to resolve 
the debt crisis.

Upon returning to Athens, Tsipras held an emergency meeting with his 
cabinet. He then appeared on national television after midnight to announce 
the referendum, which he said he had discussed with Merkel, French President 
François Hollande and ECB chief Mario Draghi.

“After five months of hard negotiations, our partners unfortunately ended up 
making a proposal that was an ultimatum towards Greek democracy and the 
Greek people,” Tsipras said. He said that the EU had subjected Greece to 
“humiliation and blackmail,” adding that its proposals “clearly violate 
European rules and the basic rights to work, equality and dignity.”

Nonetheless, he proposed that the Greek people vote on whether to accept 
these reactionary proposals, calling this a “democratic process.”

“I will respect the result, whatever it is,” he added.

Tsipras’s proposal is a reactionary fraud, designed to lend a veneer of 
democratic legitimacy to the looting of Greek workers and middle-class 
people by the banks.

According to Tsipras’s proposal, either they can vote to accept EU cuts 
pushing them even deeper into penury, or vote no and face a cutoff of credit 
from the EU and the ECB, the bankruptcy of the Greek state and the collapse 
of Greece’s banking system. Indeed, it appears that, even before the 
referendum, Greek’s banks are beginning to collapse.

On Thursday, Jens Weidmann, the head of Germany’s influential central bank 
(Bundesbank), said that the ECB should prepare to cut off credit to Greek 
banks. With depositors continuing to pull money from Greek banks, at least 
one bank—Alpha Bank—reported that it had stopped processing online 
transactions this morning.

If the Greek state and banks were totally cut off from access to credit in 
euros, and Greece was thus forced to reintroduce a national currency to bail 
out its banks and avert total financial collapse, the resulting devaluation 
of the Greek currency would likely devastate the country.
One study, by the Swiss bank UBS in 2011, estimated that a country like 
Greece could suffer a staggering 40 to 50 percent collapse of its Gross 
Domestic Product in the year following such an event.

Sav Savouri, chief economist at the Tosca Fund, a London-based hedge fund, 
bluntly predicted that a Greek exit from the euro would lead to a 
“collapsing civil society” and the coming to power of a military 
dictatorship. “In every instance where that’s happened, the military will 
take over the role of government,” he said.

It is unclear how a referendum would turn out. A June 16 Mega TV poll found 
56.2 percent for staying with the euro and 35.4 percent support for a euro 
exit. However, pollsters admitted that opinion is shifting rapidly, with 
support for a euro exit rising 10 percent in the first half of June.

The situation Greece confronts is a devastating indictment of the bankruptcy 
of Syriza’s pro-capitalist perspective. Having refused to appeal for a 
mobilization of deep opposition to austerity in the European working class, 
hoping instead that other EU powers would criticize and soften austerity 
policies demanded by Germany, it has found itself isolated, and compelled to 
impose continued cuts. It is now reduced to proposing a referendum that 
amounts to holding a loaded gun to the head of the Greek people.

Beyond giving his reactionary maneuvers a pseudo-democratic veneer, Tsipras’s 
referendum proposal is a tacit recognition that his party and his government 
are deeply split and cannot agree on how to proceed.

Broad sections of the Syriza-led government and of the Greek ruling class as 
a whole are pushing for capitulation to what Tsipras acknowledged were 
humiliating demands. After Greece’s central bank came out with a call to 
remain in the euro, Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis stressed yesterday 
that Greece was doing everything it could to satisfy the “strange demands” 
of its creditors and was determined to remain inside the euro zone.

The Financial Times recently reported on a pool party held in the “leafy, 
affluent northern suburbs” of Athens and attended by a pro-EU crowd of 
“well-heeled businessmen, politicians, academics, and socialites.” For these 
layers, the FT noted, “life without the euro is almost unimaginable. The 
single currency made it easier for them to send children to study abroad and 
purchase property and luxury goods elsewhere in Europe.”

Given that Syriza largely consists of similar affluent middle-class 
academics, politicians, and socialites, divorced from and hostile to the 
working class, similar moods are well represented inside Syriza itself.

Other sections of the government, including Syriza’s Left Platform faction 
and the far-right Independent Greeks (Anel) party, are considering a Greek 
exit from the euro. Greek Development Minister Panagiotis Lafazanis, a 
member of the Left Platform, called on Greeks to answer “with a resounding 
no” to the referendum’s proposal of a deal with the EU.

Behind them stand other, powerful sections of the Greek financial 
aristocracy, notably shipping magnates with close ties to Anel. Their 
fortunes have until now been protected by provisions of the Greek 
constitution stipulating that they pay zero tax on international earnings. 
However, the EU’s latest plans include proposals to “phase out special tax 
treatments for the shipping industry” and “implement an effective taxation 
framework for commercial shipping.”

Such measures would undercut the wealth of the shipping magnates, who still 
control the world’s largest merchant fleet. The holdings of the wealthiest 
of them, Philip Niarchos, are valued at $2.5 billion, and four other 
shipping tycoons have assets worth over one billion euros.

These bitter divisions inside the Greek ruling class mirror divisions 
between the major imperialist powers in Europe. While European officials 
have until now insisted that they aimed to keep Greece inside the euro zone 
in talks led by Berlin, it emerged yesterday that British Prime Minister 
David Cameron believes that the breakup of the euro zone via a Greek exit 
may be the best strategy.

A diplomatic memo leaked to the Guardian said that Cameron “wondered if it 
was wise for Angela Merkel to allow the discussion with Greece to take place 
at the [Prime Minister] level and mused that it might be better for Greece 
to leave the euro zone in order to sort its economy out.”

The only way forward for the working class is to set its policy 
independently of all the factions of the capitalist class, whose social 
order has utterly failed. The critical task is to prepare to mobilize the 
working class in Greece and across Europe in revolutionary struggle against 
the reactionary intrigues of Syriza and the EU.

The authors also recommend:

Political issues in the Greek debt crisis
[26 June 2015]
_______________________________________________
D66 mailing list
D66 at tuxtown.net
http://www.tuxtown.net/mailman/listinfo/d66

_______________________________________________
D66 mailing list
D66 at tuxtown.net
http://www.tuxtown.net/mailman/listinfo/d66