This deal will overturn the people’s “No”
Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras succeeded in pushing the agreement for a third Memorandum through Greece's parliament before the European powers' deadline of Wednesday at midnight, but not before the powerful left wing of his own party SYRIZA registered their opposition. Supporters of the Left Platform within SYRIZA challenged the proposals for further drastic austerity measures made by Tsipras at the end of last week, but the discontent built over the weekend as the prime minister made even more concessions to the European Union (EU) blackmailers.
is the best-known leader of the Left Platform and the Energy Minister in the SYRIZA-led government. In a statement published on his ministry's website on Tuesday, the day before the parliamentary vote, he declared his opposition to the new agreement with the EU leaders, emboldening others on the left, inside and outside SYRIZA, to take a stand. Here, publish an English-language translation of that statement by Leandros Fischer.
THE DEAL agreed to with the "institutions" is unacceptable, and a radical party such as SYRIZA and a struggling government that promised to abolish the memoranda and austerity should not be charged with it.
The so-called partners, primarily the German establishment, have treated our country as their debt colony and have behaved like ruthless blackmailers and financial assassins.
This agreement will practically annul the popular mandate and the proud "Oxi!" ("No!") of the Greek people in the referendum. This agreement can only be ratified in parliament with the votes of New Democracy, PASOK and Potami. However, the people will not ratify it--they will practically annul it in action with their unity and their struggles.
The government and the prime minister himself, even at the last minute, have the capacity to reconsider their positions and take back the agreement, before final and irreversible decisions are made in parliament. Greece had and has an alternative solution to the agreement. The creditors' choice of capitulation or disaster is a false and terrorizing one--and one that has been discredited in the popular consciousness.
