Greeks
begin voting in referendum as the euro faces its biggest challenge
Alexis
Tsipras calls referendum ‘day of celebration’, in which almost 10
million Greeks have right to vote on whether nation should accept its
creditors’ terms
John
Hooper and Helena Smith in Athens
Sunday
5 July 2015 10.16 BST /
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/05/greeks-begin-voting-in-referendum-as-the-euro-faces-its-biggest-challenge
Greeks
have begun voting in a referendum that presents the biggest challenge
to the euro since its adoption, and risks sending shockwaves through
the world’s financial markets.
Casting his ballot
in the central Athens district of Kypseli, the country’s prime
minister, Alexis Tsipras, called the referendum a “day of
celebration”. Addressing a crush of reporters as loud cries of “no”
rang out from supporters, Tsipras lashed out at the propaganda war
waged in the week since he called the vote.
“Democracy has
defeated fear. The determination of the people will beat the
propaganda of fear,” he said, in an apparent reference to warnings
from the opposition and European leaders that a no vote could lead to
Greece’s exit from the euro and even the EU. Tsipras, who along
with his leftwing Syriza party has campaigned for Greeks to vote no,
added: “The people are sending a message. A government can be
ignored but no one can ignore the desire of an entire people to take
life in its hands.”
The conservative
opposition leader, Antonis Samaras, also cast his ballot, saying: “We
vote yes to Greece. We vote yes to Europe.”
The referendum comes
at the end of a week of unending drama during which Greece closed its
banks, rationed cash, failed to repay the IMF and lost billions of
euros when its bailout programme expired. The vote is on the last
terms offered to Greece before Tsipras abandoned talks with his
country’s lenders last weekend, saying their conditions would only
exacerbate the plight of a country whose economy has already shrunk
by a quarter.
The Greek president,
Prokopis Pavlopoulos, emphasised the need for national unity as
voting got under way. It is only the second referendum to take place
in more than 40 years, and takes place as signs of social division
and fears of civil strife increase.
“Irrespective of
the result, we have to traverse what will be a difficult tomorrow
with unity,” Pavlopoulos told reporters. “That is what our
forefathers did. That is what we are going to do. We will go forward,
all together.”
At a rally in the
centre of Athens on Friday night, Tsipras had urged his compatriots
to cast a no ballot, assuring them it would not be a vote for leaving
the euro, but for remaining in Europe with dignity.
Almost 9.9 million
Greeks have the right to vote in the referendum. Nearly 110,000 who
have just turned 18 will vote for the first time, according to
authorities. Of that number 55,206 are men and 53,165 women. Most
young Greeks, who have been hit particularly hard unemployment, are
expected to vote no, pollsters say.
Among the many
imponderables was the impact of votes cast by Greeks living abroad.
Under the same rules that govern elections, expatriates must return
to the country to take part. There was evidence that large
expatriates were coming back for the referendum and that most leaned
towards voting yes.
The prime minister’s
decision to call the vote prompted outrage among opposition
politicians. They have argued that the offer on which the referendum
is based was withdrawn when the bailout programme ran out and that
Syriza has rigged the ballot by putting both options on one ballot
sheet with the no option first. Greece’s highest court threw out a
claim that the vote was unconstitutional on Friday.
Polling stations
opened at 7am local time and will close at 7pm (1700 BST). The first
results are expected around 9pm.
Opinion polls have
been contradictory and none has shown a clear majority for either
option, but they have all shown that an overwhelming majority of
Greeks, around three-quarters, want their country to keep the euro.
Both the parties in
government and the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn support a no vote. The
centre-right opposition New Democracy party has campaigned for a yes
vote as have the centre-left Pasok and To Potami parties.
In a surprise
development on the eve of polling, the German finance minister,
Wolfgang Schäuble, until even more hardline towards Greece than his
chancellor, Angela Merkel, adopted a more conciliatory tone.
Having previously
insisted that a no vote would see the country forced out of the euro,
he told the Bild newspaper that the choice was between holding on to
the euro and being “temporarily without it”. It was far from
clear what Schäuble had in mind, but economists have mooted the
notion of a period in which Greece might go back to its national
currency, the drachma, while its economy recovered.
With pharmacists in
Athens reporting that the government had rationed the distribution of
drugs, and fears being raised of food shortages within weeks, the
finance minister of Europe’s biggest economy said: “It is clear
that we will not leave the [Greek] people in the lurch.” His
last-minute intervention appeared to favour the no camp’s argument
that the vote is not on membership of the euro.
Schäuble’s tone
was strikingly at odds with that of his charismatic but controversial
Greek counterpart, Yanis Varoufakis, who turned up the heat before
the ballot by accusing Greece’s creditors of terrorism.
“Why did they
force us to close the banks?” he asked in an interview published by
the Spanish daily El Mundo. “To instil fear in people. And
spreading fear is called terrorism.”
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