Leftists were ready for a return to the drachma

SOME members of Greece’s leftist government wanted to raid central bank reserves and hack taxpayer accounts to prepare a return to the drachma, according to reports yesterday that highlighted the chaos in the ruling Syriza party.

It is not clear how seriously the plans, attributed to former Energy Minister Panagiotis Lafazanis and former Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, were considered by the government, and both ministers were sacked earlier this month. However, the reports have been seized on by opposition parties who have explanation.

The reports came at the end of a week of fevered speculation over what Syriza hardliners had in mind as an alternative to the tough bailout terms that Tsipras reluctantly accepted to keep Greece in the euro.

Around a quarter of the party’s 149 lawmakers rebelled over the plan to pass sweeping austerity measures in exchange for up to 86 billion (R1.18 trillion) in fresh loans and Tsipras has struggled to hold the divided party together.

In an interview with yesterday’s edition of the RealNews daily, Panagiotis Lafazanis, the

demanded

an hardline former energy minister who lost his job after rebelling over the bailout plans, said he had urged the government to tap the reserves of the Bank of Greece in defiance of the European Central Bank.

Survive

Lafazanis, the leader of a hardline faction in the ruling Syriza party that has argued for a return to the drachma, said the move would have allowed pensions and public sector wages to be paid if Greece were forced out of the euro.

“The main reason for that was for the Greek economy and Greek people to survive, which is the utmost duty every government has under the constitution,” he said.

However, he denied a report in the Financial Times that he wanted Bank of Greece governor Yannis Stournaras to be arrested if he had opposed a move to empty the central bank vaults.

In a separate report in the conservative Kathimerini daily, Varoufakis was quoted as saying that a small team in Syriza had prepared plans to secretly copy online tax codes. It said the “Plan B” was devised to allow the government to introduce a parallel payment system if the banking system was closed down. – Reuters

PHOTO: REUTERS Greek flags are displayed for sale for one euro at a shop in central Athens yesterday. Greek banks are set to keep broad cash controls in place for months.