Greek protesters hold anti-austerity march in Athens; Varoufakis tells all

▶ Greek protesters hold anti-austerity march in Athens – YouTube

Varoufakis Tells All: Tsipras Was “Dispirited” With “No” Vote, Referendum Was Meant As “Exit Strategy”

In the wake of Greek PM Alexis Tsipras’ seemingly inexplicable decision to disregard a referendum outcome he had aggressively campaigned for on the way to accepting a deal with Athens’ creditors that looked far worse than the proposal that 62% of Greek voters indicated was unacceptable just a week prior, some began to question whether Tsipras intended to win the referendum at all.

That is, some wondered if, seeing no way out, Tsipras had secretly hoped that a “yes” vote would have given him an excuse to either accept creditors’ proposals and say he was simply doing the bidding of the Greek populace, or else simply resign in feigned disgust at his people’s willingness to accept a bad deal.

Indeed, the Telegraph’s Ambrose Evans-Pritchard reported early last month that the Greek prime minister who decisively and unexpectedly pushed for a plebiscite on the last weekend of June, “never expected to win the referendum on EMU bail-out terms, let alone to preside over a blazing national revolt against foreign control.”

Now, in an interview with Christos Tsiolkas for the Australian magazine Monthly, ex-FinMin Yanis Varoufakis tells the story of what took place in the minutes and hours after the referendum “no” vote and details what he calls “The Schaueble Plan”. Most notably, Varoufakis says Tsipras was “dispirited” by the “no” vote and that many in the Greek government were indeed depending on a “yes” vote to give them a way out of what seemed like an intractable situation.  keep reading