Varoufakis hits out at gov’t again

Ex-FinMin accuses administration of copying predecessors it had condemned

Continuing the war of words with the government he used to serve, former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis has hit out at Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras over his administration’s bond issue, accusing his former comrade of hypocrisy in adopting the very tactics of the predecessors that he had condemned.

In a statement posted on his personal website late on Monday after the government announced that it would be issuing five-year bonds, Varoufakis noted that, while in opposition, Tsipras had condemned conservative premier Antonis Samaras for tapping the bond market, declaring that the move would only benefit foreign banks and investors.

“The Tsipras government today is simply rolling over precisely the same bond that the SamarasVenizelos-Stournaras government issued in 2014,” Varoufakis wrote, referring to former PASOK leader Evangelos Venizelos and then finance minister Yannis Stournaras. “This is a remarkable U-turn by Mr Tsipras and his ministers,” Varoufakis declared.

Varoufakis’s dig came a few hours after he responded to Tsipras’s suggestion that his appointment was a “big mistake” by referring to a “deep incoherence.” “Either I was the right choice to spearhead the ‘collision’ with the troika of Greece’s lenders because my plans were convincing, or my plans were not convincing and, thus, I was the wrong choice,” he wrote in a letter to The Guardian.