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NY Times, July 3 2015
Alexis Tsipras’s Enemies in Europe See Their Chance in Vote on Greece’s
Bailout Terms
By SUZANNE DALEY
ATHENS — Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras says the referendum in Greece on
Sunday is simply about whether to agree to what he sees as a bad deal
from the country’s creditors. Many of his opponents say it is actually
about whether Greece wants to stay with the euro.
What neither side typically acknowledges is that the vote amounts to a
referendum on Mr. Tsipras and whether he should continue to lead his
country. And what is playing out now is a largely unacknowledged
campaign to oust him, led as much by his critics among other European
leaders and top officials as it is by his rivals in Greece.
By long-established diplomatic tradition, leaders and international
institutions do not meddle in the domestic politics of other countries.
But under cover of a referendum in which the rest of Europe has a clear
stake, European leaders who have found Mr. Tsipras difficult to deal
with have been clear about the outcome they prefer.
Many are openly opposing him on the referendum, which could very
possibly make way for a new government and a new approach to finding a
compromise. The situation in Greece, analysts said, is not the first
time that European politics have crossed borders, but it is the most
open instance and the one with the greatest potential effect so far on
European unity.
“People are realizing they have more and more of a stake in each other’s
domestic policies,” said Mark Leonard, the director of the European
Council on Foreign Relations, “and so you see more interference.”
Martin Schulz, a German who is president of the European Parliament,
offered at one point to travel to Greece to campaign for the “yes”
forces, those in favor of taking a deal along the lines offered by the
creditors.
On Thursday, Mr. Schulz was on television making clear that he had
little regard for Mr. Tsipras and his government. “We will help the
Greek people but most certainly not the government,” he said.
Even as it backed Greece’s call for a new bailout plan to include debt
relief, the International Monetary Fund essentially scolded the Tsipras
government on Thursday, suggesting that it had mismanaged the economy in
its brief tenure in office this year.
Mr. Tsipras had all but promised to step down if Greeks voted yes. But
with three days to go before the vote, he went on television on Thursday
and left the issue unclear. He said that in the event of a yes vote, he
would remain in his “institutional role” and see that the procedures
provided for by the Constitution were followed. He complained bitterly
about European interference in the vote.
Earlier in the day, Mr. Tsipras’s finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis,
said unequivocally that he would resign Monday if the country voted yes.
Hopes that a yes vote will undercut Mr. Tsipras or force his resignation
have been behind calls by Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and most
of the top European officials in Brussels to let the referendum play out
before engaging in any further talks, analysts say, even though the
European officials were at first furious when Mr. Tsipras asked for a
vote on the issue.
Nearly the entire top European leadership in Brussels is backing a yes vote.
Earlier this week, the president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude
Juncker, suggested that Mr. Tsipras had not been honest with the Greek
people about what had been offered. In an emotional news conference, he
urged the Greeks not to follow Mr. Tsipras’s call for a “no” vote.
“You have to vote yes, whatever the question,” he said, “because
responsible, honorable Greek citizens, who are justly proud of
themselves and their country, must say yes to Europe.”
Some experts distinguish between the words of elected officials, such as
Ms. Merkel, and those of officials who work for the European Central
Bank or the European Commission, saying that while it may be appropriate
for elected officials to speak out, European officials should not.
“There has been a troubling lack of impartiality by European Union
officials,” said Simon Tilford, the deputy director of the Center for
European Reform, in London. “We have seen a steady stream of very
inappropriate remarks.”
Others point out that in recent years, European leaders have been
meddling in the domestic affairs of other countries more frequently.
They quietly had a hand in the departures of a previous Greek prime
minister, George A. Papandreou, and of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi
of Italy, both in 2011.
Mr. Tsipras faces plenty of opposition at home as well. Huge “yes”
crowds turned out this week for a demonstration in Athens, and
opposition political leaders in Greece have been pondering the
possibility of a unity government as soon as next week should Mr.
Tsipras step aside.
Stavros Theodorakis, the leader of To Potami, a new centrist party that
won 6 percent of the vote in the last election, called Thursday for a
new unity government, saying that any pro-Europe members of Mr.
Tsipras’s Syriza party could break off to be partners with other
parties, including his own, and avoid a new round of disruptive elections.
“The country, come Sunday night, needs serenity,” he said. Mr.
Theodorakis said the new party would offer a balanced approach that
could quickly make a deal with Greece’s creditors and reopen the banks,
which have been closed all week to prevent a run on them.
Some opposition leaders have traveled to Brussels in recent weeks to
meet with officials there, prompting some Syriza supporters to complain
that Mr. Tsipras never had a shot at governing. “This has been a silent
coup d’état,” said Stelios Kouloglou, a European Parliament member with
Syriza. “The idea from the very beginning was to overthrow Tsipras and
get someone in there who would do what they were told.”
Mr. Kouloglou said that Mr. Tsipras would have to go if the vote was
yes, and he worried that if Mr. Tsipras prevailed on the no vote,
unhappy European officials would simply increase pressure on Greek banks
until Mr. Tsipras left.
Some experts say the timing of the European Central Bank action in
capping emergency funding to Greek banks this week appeared to be part
of a campaign to influence voters.
“I don’t see how anybody can believe that the timing of this was
coincidence,” said Mark Weisbrot, an economist and a co-director of the
Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington. “When you
restrict the flow of cash enough to close the banks during the week of a
referendum, this is a very deliberate move to scare people.”
Whether or not it was intended, it had that effect. Polls indicate that
support for Mr. Tsipras fell sharply as Greeks confronted long lines and
limits on their withdrawals.
Mr. Weisbrot also said the Europeans were having a powerful impact on
the elections by saying over and over that the vote was a decision about
staying in the eurozone.
On television Thursday night, Mr. Tsipras made it clear that he thought
the European Central Bank’s action was meant to influence the
referendum. “This was a vengeful tactic,” he said. “The Eurogroup
finance ministers didn’t want to allow the Greek government, the Greek
democracy and the Greek people to exercise their right to democratic
procedures without interventions.
“What we’re seeing happening since Saturday,” he said, “is an orgy of
interventions and scaremongering of the Greek people so that the
lenders’ preferable outcome materializes.”
Dimitris Bounias contributed reporting.
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