“If I’m prosecuted and convicted of high treason, it would be interesting. For what? Saying no to an agreement that the troika itself considers to be unsustainable?” said Yanis Varoufakis.
Greece’s former finance minister gave an interview to The Guardian where he spoke about accusations against him, his relationship with Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, his negotiating tactics, his future political plans and his ideas about the Eurozone and Greece’s bailouts.
Varoufakis’ alleged plan to hack taxpayers’ accounts and establish a secret payment system and his alleged secret strategy to bring Greece back to the drachma have made opposition parties attack him, to the point of accusing him of treason and ask for his prosecution.
“I think it’s going to fizzle out. However if I’m prosecuted and convicted of high treason, it would be interesting. For what? Saying no to an agreement that the troika itself considers to be unsustainable? Or indeed for having tried to come up with a defensive plan against threats they were making? In a sense, I would very much like it if it came to it because I would be able to expose them for what they are.”
According to the former minister, SYRIZA was not responsible for stalling the progress the Greek economy made before the January elections. For him, Greece has gone bankrupt since 2010, but the Eurozone refuses to admit it, continuing a game of “extend and pretend,” giving Greece loans they know the country cannot afford to pay back.
“They extend a loan that has turned bad and pretend that it is not bad and give good money after bad money. So the largest loan ever in history, in absolute not relative terms, was given to the most insolvent state in the Eurozone,” he told The Guardian.
As for his much criticized tactics, negotiating techniques and overall behavior and attitude towards his European peers, he said: “They were not prepared to acknowledge that the program they had imposed upon Greece was a failure.” His proposed economic program was thwarted by creditors because they wanted a “regime change.”
Varoufakis reiterated his position that the new bailout agreement would be catastrophic for Greece, criticizing Tsipras for accepting the deal and blaming him for going against his pledges and leftist ideology and betraying Greeks: “…this mutation I have already witnessed. Those in our party/government who underwent it, then turned against those who refused to mutate, the result being a split in the party that our people, the courageous voters who voted NO, did not deserve,” he said.
According to Varoufakis, Tsipras mistakenly followed his ego and the suggestions of his advisors. He wanted to become the “new De Gaulle, or Mitterrand more likely”, he said about him. His decision to go to snap elections is because if elections are held less than 12 months after the previous election, the candidates are produced by a leader-specified party list. In that case, the earlier the election the better for Tsipras,” he said, “as every week that passes . . . weakens his support with the electorate.”
So far it doesn’t seem that he would join the new party (Popular Unity) created by SYRIZA’s left platform, nor does he seem willing to line up alongside Tsipras. “I will not stand with his party, but I’m not going into the business of attacking him as a matter of course either,” he said told The Guardian.
Nevertheless, he will not abandon politics, he said. “I’m a member of parliament, and my commitment to my voters was that I’m not going to abandon them, come what may.”
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