Anti-govt ‘Yes’ gains ground ahead of Greece polls
ATHENS: A new survey ahead of Greece’s make-or-break weekend referendum showed a swing against the government to a “Yes” result, amid a sense of crisis fuelled by cash rationing and burgeoning protests.
The poll by Greece’s Alco institute said 44.8% of Greeks intend to vote “Yes” and 43.4% are for “No” – making it the first published survey to give a lead to the “Yes” vote ahead of Sunday’s ballot.
However the survey’s margin of error of 3.1 percentage points meant the end result was still too close to call.
Stakes are high in the plebiscite, with EU leaders warning a “No” would jeopardise Greece’s place in the 19-nation eurozone.
But Greece’s radical left government of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras fiercely rejects that, and says the referendum is only about whether Greeks are willing to accept tougher austerity in return for international bailout funds.
Tsipras argues a “No” would strengthen his hand in negotiating better terms from Greece’s international creditors, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the European Commission and the European Central Bank (ECB).
Athens wants the creditors to restructure Greece’s suffocating mountain of debt, which has risen to an unsustainable 180% of gross domestic product despite a 2012
€ write-down that rid it of 107bil (RM446bil).
Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis told Irish radio RTE that “the reason why negotiations stalled” last week over bailout terms was because there was no provision for further debt relief.
But EU Commission deputy president Valdis Dombrovskis, who is also commissioner for the euro, told German newspaper Die Welt in an interview: “It would be wrong to think that a “No” would strengthen Greece’s bargaining position. The opposite is true.”
Some Greek voters who initially backed Tsipras’s position have switched to the “Yes” camp after seeing the reality of the situation when capital controls were ordered this week to stem a bank run, capping
€ ATM withdrawals to 60 (RM250) a day. — AFP