News Release

Greek Government “Willfully” Ignores Referendum Vote

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JOHN PILGER, [In London] jpilger2003 at yahoo.co.uk, www.johnpilger.com
Investigative journalist John Pilger’s books include Hidden Agendas and The New Rulers of the World. He wrote “The Problem of Greece is not Only a Tragedy: It is a Lie” in CounterPunch about the bailout deal Greece struck with its creditors, which included similar terms to the ones Greek voters overwhelmingly rejected in a referendum on July 5. In the article, he wrote: “An historic betrayal has consumed Greece. Having set aside the mandate of the Greek electorate, the Syriza government has willfully ignored last week’s landslide ‘No’ vote and secretly agreed to a raft of repressive, impoverishing measures in return for a ‘bailout’ that means sinister foreign control and a warning to the world.

“Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has pushed through parliament a proposal to cut at least 13 billion euros from the public purse – 4 billion euros more than the ‘austerity’ figure rejected overwhelmingly by the majority of the Greek population in a referendum on 5 July.

“For six months Tsipras and the recently discarded finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, shuttled between Athens and Brussels, Berlin and the other centres of European money power. Instead of social justice for Greece, they achieved a new indebtedness, a deeper impoverishment that would merely replace a systemic rottenness based on the theft of tax revenue by the Greek super-wealthy – in accordance with European ‘neo-liberal’ values — and cheap, highly profitable loans from those now seeking Greece’s scalp.”