On the night of the 25th June, Varoufakis wrote this letter of resignation, anticipating that within hours PM Tsipras’ concessions, amounting to surrender, would lead to an agreement with the troika – an agreement that Varoufakis could not live with. However, on 25th June, the troika refused to acknowledge PM Tsipras’ white flag – forcing him to call a referendum. This is the letter of resignation that Varoufakis wrote that night but which, due to the prospect of a contested referendum, he did not submit.
On the 25th of January, dignity was restored to the people of Greece. Our government was the first to stand up and reject the misanthropic irrationality of our rolling, extend-and- pretend, ‘bailouts’.
We
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confined the troika to its Brussels’ lair
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articulated, for the first time in the Eurogroup, a sophisticated economic argument to which there was no credible response
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internationalised Greece’s humanitarian crisis and its roots in intentionally recessionary policies
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spread hope beyond Greece’s borders that democracy can breathe within a monetary union dominated by fear
Ending interminable, self-defeating, austerity and restructuring Greece’s public debt were our two targets. But these two were also our creditors’ targets who, from the first moment, planned:
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How to humiliate our government by forcing us to succumb to stringent austerity,
and
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How to drag us into an agreement that offers no commitments to a well-defined debt restructure.
A few weeks ago, our negotiating team, decided to offer levels of primary surplus that are tantamount to harsh austerity (even though they are lower than the crazy levels previously agreed to by the Samaras-Venizelos governments). I dissented, convinced that during the next decade primary surpluses lower than 2% were the sole weapon against the crisis, and that acceptance of 3.5% surpluses in medium to long term jeopardised our argument in favour of immediate debt restructuring. Nonetheless, I stayed in my post in order to contribute to the second crucial struggle: the debt restructure which, in my estimation, should at the very least involve the transfer of the complete stock of our SMP bonds from the ECB to the ESM.
Now that, little by little, and under incredible pressures from the creditors, our side seems willing to give debt restructure a lower priority, the government’s and my Prime Minister’s efforts will be better served if the Ministry of Finance is led by a colleague who has a plan on how to promote recovery and social justice after our retreat vis-à-vis austerity and debt restructuring.
The Left lives for collective action and, in this spirit, I shall support fully the new Minister, the government and, naturally, Alexis Tsipras with all my strength and in any manner requested of me.
The good struggle for changing Greece within a changing Europe continues unabated.
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