Addressing an Economist Conference which was taking place in Athens on Monday, main opposition Radical Left Coalition (SYRIZA) party leader Alexis Tsipras repeated that Greece must immediately renounce the harsh austerity demanded by its European partners and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in return for bailout loans, stressing that the EU-IMF plan was simply not viable. "The longer the [Memorandum of Understanding] lasts, the faster the social and economic resilience of the country will be exhausted," he underlined, stressing that the programme must be abandoned in collaboration with Greece's EU partners.
According to Tsipras, it was an insistence on the austerity policies of the Memorandum that would finally lead to Greece being pushed into a voluntary exit from the Eurozone, which was the only legal way for this to be effected and an outcome that all parties should strive to avoid. He was also harshly critical of the three-party coalition government under Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, which he accused of ensuring that Greece was excluded from the "initially positive" decisions of the lastest EU summit for the debt-burdened European south. In doing this, Tsipras argued, Samaras "had sent a clear message that he has given up on Europe before he has even started".
The head of SYRIZA repeated that no discussion on any issue can begin with the troika before there is an express commitment to uphold the agreements made at the EU summit of 29 July 2011 concerning Greece. SYRIZA had also strongly criticised the government's stance in an announcement issued earlier on Monday, saying it was going back on its pre-election pledges and postponing renegotiation of the harsh bailout terms until after their implementation, unaffected by the election result and the message sent by the Greek people. (AMNA)
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