Greece’s
commitment to the euro came under fresh scrutiny yesterday when it emerged that
senior government ministers had secretly planned a return to the drachma.
Although Yanis Varoufakis, the former
finance minister, and Panagiotis Lafazanis, the former energy minister, have
been sacked, the legacy of their plots have pushed Mr Tsipras into a new bout
of turmoil.
The Greek prime minister likes to portray
himself as the captain of a team fighting against EU hardliners such as
Wolfgang Schauble, the German finance minister, who want to drive Greece out of
the euro. Now it appears that senior figures within his ruling left-wing Syriza
party also believed that Greece should prepare to bring back the drachma.
The revelation illustrates the obstacles
facing negotiators from the European Commission, the European Central Bank and
the International Monetary Fund, who are due to start talks in Athens on a
third Greek bailout package tomorrow (Tuesday).
Mr Tsipras and other eurozone leaders may
have agreed in principle to the deal - an 86 euros billion loan in return for
more austerity - but it has been rejected as unworkable by Mr Schauble and as
unfair by many in Syriza.
Mr Lafazanis gave weight to speculation that
the government had a covert plan to go back to the drachma if the talks
collapsed when he said that he had proposed a raid on the reserves of the Bank
of Greece that would enable pensions and public sector wages to be paid if
Greece was pushed out of the euro.
“The main reason for that was for the Greek
economy and Greek people to survive, which is the utmost duty every government
has under the constitution,” he said, while denying a reports that he had been
prepared to arrest the bank’s governor if he opposed the raid. Mr Lafanazis
told his fellow plotters that the Greek mint held about euros 22 billion.
Critics said that was wrong and his plan was unrealistic.
The cloak-and-dagger mood of Greek politics
was compounded by a report that Mr Varoufakis had been asked by Mr Tsipras to
study the creation of a parallel banking system that would have enabled Greece
to switch to the drachma overnight, it said.
Πηγή: theaustralian.com.au
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