Greece in revolt over bailout deal
Fires rage in Athens again after PM’s own party turns against ‘new Versailles Treaty’
PROTESTERS threw petrol bombs and clashed with riot police as the Greek parliament met last night to vote on austerity measures required for the latest European bailout.
As flames erupted outside the parliament building in Athens, hundreds of armour- clad riot police charged at demonstrators, firing tear gas to try to disperse them.
Officers also used pepper spray to fight back youths in the 12,000-strong crowd who were hurling Molotov cocktails and rocks at them. The youths, some carrying clubs and wearing balaclavas, had mingled with ordinary protesters when crowds gathered as MPs decided the country’s fate.
They had until midnight to pass a raft of measures including billions in cuts, VAT rises and pension reforms to secure a three-year bailout deal worth up to £60billion.
Trade unions had described the package as ‘economic murder’ and called for thousands to take to the streets.
And former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, who quit his post last week, said the deal was a ‘ new Versailles Treaty haunting Europe’.
The 1919 treaty, which set out Germany’s punishment after the First World War, included the payment of crippling reparations that some believe created the economic climate for the rise of the Nazis.
Mr Varoufakis, a member of prime minister Alexis Tsipras’s Left-wing Syriza party, wrote on his blog that the comparison of the bailout deal to the Versailles Treaty was ‘all too germane’.
He also said in a radio interview earlier this week that the austerity package was a ‘form of post-modern occupation’ that would boost the far-Right Golden Dawn party.
There were furious scenes in the Athens parliament last night as politicians ripped up papers outlining the terms of the deal and threw them at Mr Tsipras as he sought their approval.
Syriza, which came to power in January on an anti-austerity platform, was deeply split on the reforms required by Greece’s creditors before they agree to a further bailout.
Mr Tsipras told state TV ‘the policies imposed on us were irrational’ but that the deal was the best Greece could get. He said he took ‘full responsibility’ for an agreement he did not believe in, saying he had done so to ‘avoid disaster’.
‘A prime minister must fight, speak the truth, take decisions and not run away,’ he added.
Mr Tsipras was expected to have the numbers in parliament to pass the measures, as he was supported by Greece’s pro-EU opposition parties.
But he admitted his political survival would be in danger if large numbers of his own party voted against him. ‘If I won’t have your support, it will be hard for me to remain as prime minister,’ he told his MPs.
One of his deputy finance ministers resigned before the crucial vote. In a letter to the prime minister, Nadia Valavani, who was in charge of taxation, said: ‘I’m not going to vote for this and this means I cannot stay in the government.’
More than half of Syriza’s central committee signed a state- ment attacking the agreement as a coup by European leaders.
The statement, signed by 109 of the committee’s 201 members, said the deal was ‘the result of threats of immediate financial strangulation’ and came with ‘humiliating terms of supervision, destructive for our country and its people’.
It was ‘ a coup that goes directly against any kind of notion of democracy’, the statement added.
Greece needs £4.4billion by Monday to make debt repayments due to the European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund.
Athens expects to get financing through the new £60billion bailout, but it will take at least four weeks before a deal on that is agreed, so it needs a quick cash injection of £6billion to avoid default.
The EU has been considering plans for this ‘bridge financing’ that could leave Britain responsible for around £700million.
‘Hard to remain as prime minister’