“Breakthrough in bailout talks is close,” Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras announced Monday evening as Greece is struggling to strike a deal with the country’s creditors by May 9th and avoid default to International Monetary Fund. In a live-interview to a private television channel, Tsipras ruler out snap elections but he streesed the necessity for a referendum if lenders insisted on demands deemed unacceptable by his leftist government, elected to scrap austerity
He also said that “priority of the Greek government was the payment of wages and pensions”.
During the interview to STAR TV and journalist Nikos Chatzinikolaou’s programme “ston eniko”, Alexis Tsipras stressed that the government did not have the right to accept the creditors’ demands that fell outside the limits of its mandate and would have to ask Greeks to decide.
“If the solution falls outside our mandate, I will not have the right to violate it, so the solution to which we will come to will have to be approved by the Greek people,” he told Star television in the interview.
“But I am certain we will not reach that point. Despite the difficulties, the possibilities to win in the negotiations are large. We should not give in to panic moves. Whoever gets scared in this game loses.”
Answering questions posed by the audience present in the TV studio, Tsipras addressed issues that trouble the Greek society like the market and the economy, taxation, lack of liquidity, bureaucracy and a very slow and ineffective justice system.
Among other, the Prime Minister said that the high contributions to social security s were a problem and needed to be dealt with by a draft bill; meanwhile, a joint ministerial decision was being drafted to cover more than 2.5 million uninsured Greek people – a humanitarian crisis. (more: here, here and here)
Video: Alexis Tsipras interview (English translation/PART I)
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Video: Alexis Tsipras, (English translation/ PART II/ Q&A with audience)
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PS Kudos to enikos.gr for the English voice over
If you want to see a real “humanitarian crisis”, go to Syria, Nepal or Haiti. Don’t put Greece in the same line.
Or did you cry on “humanitarian crisis” in Romania, Bulgaria, Kosovo etc. before the situation in Greece started to be more difficult?
Nefo
Yes pay this bunch of ineffektive and slow working People.
years they where payed well with big pensions.
So pay them the half the next years.
And give the “normal” pensinoners a bit more.
This referendum should be held in the creditor nations.
Merkel alone has 22 million voters…
Greece would be out at the blink of an eye…
Coming up with the idea of a referendum will fire back as the next bailoit package needs to undergo a parliamentry vote in 18 countries and Syriza did its very best to ensure that these countries voters are completly pissed and only wait for an opportunity to teach the Greek radicals a lesson.
oh, Eu conservatives are scared of a Greke referendum, right? That’s why they pulled the carpet under Papandreou’s feet.
ssstttt. Don’t let facts get in the way of fuction. Chris loves his fiction…