Former coalition partner of the SYRIZA government has claimed that ex Φinance Minister Yanis Varoufakis had agreed with German counterpart Wolfgang Schaeuble on Grexit. “Greece would receive 80 billion euros and leave the eurozone,” Panos Kammenos said on Monday night in an interview with ANT1 TV.
“Varoufakis had agreed with Schaueble to take 80 billion and leave the eurozone,” Kammenos said. he added that “Varoufakis wanted to stay in the eurozone only in the movies.”
“He followed the Schaeuble line,” Kammenos added about his former government partner.
” What you call [third] memorandum was the agreement that saved Greece, it was the ultimate agreement and fortunately we achieved it with the help of the Americans and the involvement of the French ” Kammenos said.
“After that Tsipras and I said that we should get a new mandate and so we went to snap elections. There the people decided to allow us to continue ruling.”
Varoufakis responded to Kammenos allegations calling him a “branded slanderer.”
“Kammenos is a branded slanderer,” Varoufakis told Real FM on Tuesday morning adding that all he had to say about that period, he has said.
“I never refuse to talk about 2015. I admit I made mistakes but at the same time I’m proud of my attitude when I argued with the Troika, the “euro-supporters” and the “drachmistas,” the former finance minister stressed.
Of all the inept and corrupt politicians Mr Varoufakis could stand alone
This is Kammenos talking. No one in his right mind would believe a word of what he has to say or even expect a hint of truth in it. Hopefully he can stay home, away from parliament, and play with his toy soldiers in isolation.
Threatening to leave not the same as agreeing to leave. Everyone knows that Wolfgang offered the 80 but this does not mean that Varoufakis agreed to accepted it.
It appears that Kammenos is being antagonistic for some reason. These two clashing politicians have otherwise defended Greece’s interests to an admirable degree.
The previous US administration, unlike this one, did not want a breakup of the EU (or Brexit for that matter). The EU also destroyed Greece’s democracy /referendum by illegally closing banks. Then, a bankrupt Greece was further waterboarded to multiply its debt while thrown into a financial depression to increasingly be unable to repay it. Certifiably insane policies economists reiterated and yet so little said, tiny kindred Greece was steamrolled by barbaric rich creditors for all the thanks to saving its banks and staving contagion. This was before Brexit and the rise of Germany’s far right, to get an idea of the course EU policies are taking, as we also witness an equally insane Trump or Erdogan during these truly unbelievably criminal times of injustice.
The nation leading the EU, Germany, (who also tried to destroy Europe twice) also never lived up to its commitments to repay its loans it took from Greece any more than it extended a debt relief that only it can attest greatest to its benefits. Never before was so much unrealistically expected from a modern western nation. It was a bad experiment.
Laslty, Varoufakis agreed to no such thing even though Wily Wolfgang offered it, and to consider it slander goes against Varoufalis’ DiEM25 movement who’s mandate is specifically to keep Europe united, an objective I personally find idealist in this oxymoron of a union led by totalitarian bullies. It is like trying to hugging an irritated baboon as we can see. He even refused to betray the people like Tsipras did, and quit. In short, Kammenos was not being truthful to a degree that Yanis found this untrue accusation offensive enough to call it slander.
Personally, I would prefer that Yanis would want to leave this dictating EU, like Britain has done, than to the very contrary.
I am disheartened to see people I respect so greatly passionately polarize. They should be on the same side with the same interests and objectives unlike Tsipras who goes collaborates against the people from the referendum to Precepes, neither of these two would have done that or what well intended Kotzias pulled with Tsiopras on the name deal. I guess we can perhaps all disagree to varying degrees.