Greek voters have overwhelmingly turned down the terms of an international bailout in a historic rejection of austerity. With a margin of 61 to 39 percent, Greeks voted no to further budget cuts and tax hikes in exchange for a rescue package from European creditors. Polls had indicated a narrow vote, but the “no” side swept districts across the country. Thousands of people flocked to Athens’ Syntagma Square Sunday night in celebration. In voting against austerity, Greeks have rejected measures that helped cripple the economy, but also turned down a financial lifeline for its struggling banks. The banks will remain closed today as the European Central Bank meets to consider new emergency loans. Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras says he will seek a new round of talks with creditors in which restructuring Greece’s $267 billion debt is on the table. In a surprise move, Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis announced his resignation today, saying Greece’s creditors no longer want him involved in the talks. Varoufakis said, “I shall wear the creditors’ loathing with pride.”
Costas Panayotakis talking:
I think it surprised everybody, including the government. All the polls before the vote suggested that it was very close. So, I think that was a great victory for democracy in Greece. People were under immense psychological pressure from the media, that were threatening them with nightmare scenarios; from workplaces, where many business owners were threatening their workers that if a “no” prevailed, they would lose their jobs; and from the European partners, who basically were saying that a “no” vote would mean exit from the eurozone. So, it’s a very important result. It’s a hopeful development. It will not end the austerity, even if there is an agreement, but it creates a better environment for anti-austerity forces to keep fighting.
the situation in Greece is still very difficult. It is urgent, because the banks are closed, so the normality in the banking system has to be restored. As long as it is not restored, it basically will have a bad effect on the economy. And this creates lots of pressure, of course, on the Greek government, and it is consistent with a strategy of economic strangulation of—that the Europeans have used ever since the election of this new anti-austerity government.
Greece’s finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, resigned. there had been some talk about Varoufakis. I mean, he used to be the head of the negotiating team with the Europeans as finance minister, and he had been replaced from that role a few months ago because he was insistent on a deal that is viable. He’s not a sort of long-term politician. So he doesn’t want to just—he didn’t want to just achieve an agreement that would last a few months and would continue this kind of pattern of agreements that are made and have to be reconsidered and revisited a few months later. So that made him very, very unpopular with his partners, who are the more traditional politicians. Perhaps it was partly a stylistic issue, as well. You know, he wasn’t—you know, finance ministers in the eurozone are usually very sort of gray, sort of technocratic figures, so perhaps his style was commented on. But I think there was substantial differences, and he basically held for his position, which was substantially right.
The older people tended to vote yes, the younger people overwhelmingly voted no—older people, pensioners, afraid for their economic stability.
this is in line with electoral results, including the electoral result back in January. There was a lot of—a terror campaign in the media, the media that never sort of looked very closely in the past about the sufferings of ordinary people. They were focusing relentlessly on the queues of pensioners trying to collect their pensions from the banks, and they created a kind of climate of fear. But for many young people, for most Greeks, they have lost so much already that they fear they have nothing more to lose.
there is a lot of hypocrisy in many—on the part of many European officials. The head of the European Commission was prime minister of Luxembourg, that thrived as a tax haven, that undercut the tax receipts of other European countries. And other countries, like the Netherlands, have also served as a tax haven. And these are countries that are oftentimes hardliners, and they point the finger to Greece. And they forget that, yes, there may be issues in Greece—there is corruption, but oftentimes the corruptors are European companies, notably German ones.
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Costas Panayotakis, author of Remaking Scarcity: From Capitalist Inefficiency to Economic Democracy. He is professor of sociology at NYC College of Technology at CUNY.
— source democracynow.org