Yanis Varoufakis’ Mera25 party issued a statement on Monday saying that it will vote down the Greek government’s new bill granting voting rights to Greek expats from their place of residence.
The leftist party accuses the Greek government of deceiving Greek expats and violating their fundamental voting rights.
The party’s statement declares that ”MeRA25 will vote against this ridicule presented as facilitating expatriate voting rights.”
Varoufakis’ party is accusing not only the Greek government, but all parties, which would like to place strict conditions on who would have the right to vote from their place of residence and who will not have that right.
The statement uses two examples, one of a young woman who left Greece recently and now lives in England to study and another one of an older man who is a pensioner in Australia but left Greece decades ago.
The statement notes that by setting a limit on the years one has been gone from Greece, thousands of expats will be excluded, including the elderly pensioner in Australia used in the example.
The party also suggests that it is wrong for expats not to be able to vote for candidate MPs, since the legislation that the government is preparing will most likely grant the right to vote for parties, but not the candidates themselves.
The Greek government has attempted to reach a compromise using all party proposals in order to obtain the widest possible consensus.
This brought some glimpses of hope on Friday, after the main opposition SYRIZA party changed its original position and accepted the principle of expats’ votes counting in the overall result.
This shift could mean that it is possible that all 300 MPs could vote in favor of the plebiscite reform.
However, Monday’s developments show that the government may have gone too far, accepting the demands of the Communists and others who envision overly strict criteria, and losing one of its original allies on the vote, the MeRA25 party, in the process.
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