Greece’s ruling party looks likely to will split in two after Thursday’s Central Committee emergency session saw the Left Platform accusing Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras of “shackling Greece with a bailout Memorandum.”
Earlier in the meeting, Tsipras asked for party unity in order to implement the reforms required for a three-year, 86-billion-euro bailout program. Tsipras said that he needs the leftist votes in order to make the first leftist government in Greece succeed. Otherwise, he said, he would have to resort to a SYRIZA grass roots referendum with the question “euro or drachma?”
Left Platform leader Panagiotis Lafazanis replied: “How many referenda do we need? We had a referendum and we got 62%”
Lafazanis went on to say that “Democracy is finished. The system of government in the country is the dictatorship of the euro.”
The Left Platform leader also said that the alternative solution was never discussed and indirectly accused the government for making the euro currency into religious faith.
At the same time, Greek Parliament President Zoe Konstantopoulou — who also opposes the signing of the third bailout deal — said that “SYRIZA did not get a people’s mandate to shackle the country with a bailout memorandum.”
“It is the historic duty of the Left to protect the people and democracy… to protect the right to dream… to build a new, viable world,” Konstantopoulou said. “Protecting the constitution is not surrealism,” she also said, paraphrasing Tsipras’ statement that it is surreal that some SYRIZA MPs claim they support the government but they oppose its policies.
During the session, 17 members of the Central Committee resigned, claiming ideological differences with current party policy.
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