Greece is in talks to hold fresh elections according to the interior minister of the cash-strapped country. This will be the people’s last chance to have some sort of say in the country’s economic policy.
‘Those who imagine that the current government is an interlude … are wrong; the people spoke and, if necessary, will do it again,’ commented Interior Minister Nikos Voutsis while discussing on how to form a measure to force all public institutions to surrender their cash reserves to the central bank. This measure will help the Government to pay off the outstanding wages of the civil servants which will help buy time for the authorities to renegotiate the terms and reforms required to secure more bailout money.
The eurozone finance ministers lambasted Athens for its ridiculously slow progress on coming to terms with required reforms that will potentially unlock the 7.2 billion euro ($ 10 billion) bailout fund.
The opposition party believes that the Greek government doesn’t have any concrete plans on either holding new elections or trying to secure the required bailout funds and insisted that they (Government) are simply dragging their heels in pointless debates.
Greece stands to fall into a severe crisis if the bailout cash is not injected into their system as soon as possible.
According to Jeroen Dijsselbloem, Eurogroup chairman, Greece has a long way to go before securing the bailout fund. ‘There remain big, big problems to be solved for Greece,’ commented Dijsselbloem, after a high-powered meeting with the eurozone finance ministers in Lativa on Friday.
On the other-hand several eurozone finance ministers have raised red-flags over Europe’s refusal to chalk out back-up plans for Greece, in case the negotiations fail. Dusan Mramor, the finance chief of Republic of Slovenia, led the talks in a private meeting with several euro-zones finance heads. Mramor commented while talking to the reporters on Saturday, “A plan B can be anything. What my discussion was about was what we will do if no new program will be achieved in time for Greece to be able to refinance itself or improve liquidity,”
Varoufakis, however strongly voted against anything remotely close to a ‘plan B’. The Greek finance minister believes that even the slightest mention of an alternate solution is completely ‘Anti-European’. “My immediate response was to say there is no such plan B, there cannot be such plan B.”