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Greek Voters Send Decisive Message to European Leaders: No Deal
A voter places his ballot in the urn during the referendum vote on July 5th, 2015, in Athens, Greece.(conejota / Shutterstock)
If there was any lingering doubt about where the majority of Greeks stood on the question of whether to accept the package deal drummed up by creditors in an attempt to contain their country’s ongoing financial fallout, early returns from Sunday’s referendum on the bailout soundly dispelled it.
In other words, that would be a no.
The New York Times brought word as the news about the vote’s results began to break in Greece later that day:
As celebrants began to gather in Athens’s central Syntagma Square, the Interior Ministry projected that more than 60 percent of the voters had said no to a deal that would have imposed greater austerity measures on the beleaguered country.
With 60 percent of the vote tallied, the actual count tracked the projections, with 61 percent voting no and 39 percent yes, the Interior Ministry said.
The no votes carried virtually every district in the country, handing a sweeping victory to Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, a leftist who came to power in January vowing to reject new austerity measures that he called an injustice and economically self-defeating. Late last month he walked away from negotiations in frustration at the creditors’ demands, called the referendum and urged Greeks to vote no as a way to give him more bargaining power.
—Posted by Kasia Anderson
Related Entries
- July 2, 2015 Breaking With Europe, IMF Calls Greek Debt Program ‘Unsustainable’
- July 2, 2015 If You Think What the EU Is Doing to Greece Is Bad, Look at What the U.S. Is Doing to Puerto Rico
Source: http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/greek_voters_send_an_unmistakably_clear_message_to_eu_leaders_20150705/
