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Tsipras Says He'd Stiff The Troika

Alexis Tsipras
SYRIZA leader Alexis Tsipras doesn’t want Greece to pay its loans

In a wordy statement, major opposition Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA) leader Alexis Tsipras said if his party ever comes to power the first order of business will be to renege on the terms of two bailouts of $325 billion from the Troika of the European Union-International Monetary Fund-European Central Bank (EU-IMF-ECB).
While the next due elections are more than two years away, Tsipiras said he expects the ruling parties of Prime Minister Antonis Samaras’ New Democracy Conservatives and its partner, the PASOK Socialists, will be repudiated in May elections for Greek municipalities and the European Parliament and bring new elections that will see the Leftists elected.
Tsipras, who has waffled on what he’d do about the loans – at times saying he would renegotiate or renege or pay only part of them – said he’s opposed to the attached austerity measures that have created record unemployment or deep poverty but he hasn’t offered a clue how he’d govern the country without money.
If Greece doesn’t repay the Troika, it could force the country out of the Eurozone and also unable to borrow from the markets, leaving the government no source of funding other than tax revenues which aren’t even enough to pay operating costs, let alone the $430 billion overall debt.
Speaking at an event for the tvxs website, Tsipras said that Samaras and PASOK leader Evangelos Venizelos want only to keep signing memorandas of agreement with the Troika while his first priority would be cancellation of the deals and an end to austerity. He has said previously he’d restore pay cuts and slashed pensions and cut taxes, although that would put Greece back into the same breakneck spending spiral that created the crisis. He hasn’t said from where the money would come.
“It is not enough to stop the destruction, but to design the future,” Tsipras said. “Our goal is to develop a new growth model that will satisfy the domestic demand, creating innovation and high added value, with decently paid and stable jobs,” he added, the Athens News Agency reported.
“The memorandum proved that the comprehensive revamp of the labour market did not improve either the quality or the quantity of production, or even the profitability of productive units and therefore it is a survival option for the productive world of the country to discuss with those who supported as of the beginning of the crisis that the neo-liberal austerity and deregulation is not the solution – it is the crisis itself,” Tsipras noted.
He said that his party’s commitment is to create a national plan for economic, social and environmental reconstruction of Greece for an immediate end to austerity and stimulation of domestic demand. He hasn’t said how he would do that.
Regarding the surplus, SYRIZA leader noted that “our primary surplus will be based on higher public revenues – not public spending cuts and social disaster.”
Tsipras stressed that “SYRIZA is not a power of division but unity,” adding that “it is not a threat, as some claim, but the last hope for Greece and its citizens.”
Samaras is planning to ask the Troika for debt relief to forgive part of what the country owes but it hasn’t been said yet how much that would be. In 2011, a previous government when current PASOK leader Evangelos Venizelos was finance chief imposed 74 percent losses on private investors, locking Greece out of the markets.

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