He emphasised that Sunday’s referendum is not a vote on whether Greece will remain in the euro. For all those reasons, it should not come as a surprise that most Greeks will interpret the question they have to answer as a “Yes” or a “No” to Greece staying in the eurozone. He insisted Greece would have to make efforts of its own in return for any aid.
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He would basically be forced to accept the creditors’ demands without amendments, said Nicholas Burns, a professor at Harvard University and ex- US Ambassador to Greece.
Meanwhile, police said about 17,000 people gathered outside the nearby Panathenian stadium for the “yes” rally, waving Greek and European Union flags and chanting “Greece, Europe, Democracy”.
That is unlikely to be agreed on overnight, meaning the harsh controls on money withdrawals and transfers may remain in place for longer than anticipated.
“Because the world will consider a “No” vote to be a withdrawal from the heart of Europe – the first step toward euro exit”, former conservative prime minister Costas Karamanlis said, making his first public speech in six years to endorse the “Yes” campaign.
Afterwards, “we might well see the Greek government and its creditors simply resume their all too familiar and intractable stand-off”, investment company BNY Mellon said in an investor note. Tsipras, who leads the radical left Syriza party that governs Greece in a ruling coalition, called for creditors to accept “a 30 percent haircut” on the country’s massive mountain of debt.
Bettel says that “the amount of time there has been to organize the referendum is not ideal”.
Either way, something needs to change fast. They really know what it means from their lives.
People stand on both sides of the issue.
He adds that “even in the case of a “yes” vote, we will have to face hard negotiations”.
They are the main contributors to Greece’s successive bailouts, and hold 211 billion euros out of a total of about 280 billion euros that Greece owes.
The State Council was requested to examine the petition submitted by two citizens who questioned the legality of the referendum and asked that it be withdrawn.
With a majority of Greek voters on his side, Tsipras might be able to win concessions from creditors that he asked for on Tuesday in a letter to Jean Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission.
It also includes a link, titled “Where I vote”, which takes visitors to a page containing a justification for the referendum according to the Greek constitution but no information on where to vote.
That means the vote will go ahead. “But over the last five and a half years the Greek crisis has had a history of throwing up the unexpected. These developments are likely to have a significant adverse economic and financial impact”, it said.
Williamson says the combination of the stimulus program from the European Central Bank stimulus and low inflation appears to be boosting consumer and business spending, helping to offset “Grexit” anxiety.
Thousands of Greeks staged rival rallies on Friday ahead of a weekend referendum that may decide the country’s future in Europe’s single currency, with polls showing voters nearly evenly split. The difference between the “yes” and “no” votes is well within the margin of error. He is advocating a “no” vote. Another, by the respected ALCO on behalf of the Proto Thema newspaper, had those in favour 0.6 points in front.
But it also suggests that Sunday’s poll could fail to produce a clear victor either way, potentially increasing the bitter divisions that the issue has already sown in Greece.
If Greece votes ‘no, ‘ he told TheStreet, there is an 80% chance it will leave the Eurozone.
“Now it’s only the banks, but if there’s a run on supermarkets and fuel starts running out, it could lead to riots, to chaos, even to a coup by the sort of military junta, which seized the country in 1967″, Athens lawyer Georgiadis Aris said.
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“The consequences are not the same if it’s a Yes or No,”‘ he said.
