Hardliners in the ruling Syriza party opposed the deal, but Tsipras found unlikely support from the opposition New Democracy, whose interim leader Vangelis Meimarakis had harsh words, causing last-minute tension when he told the prime minister that firebrand politics would lose him more members. European creditors have demanded parliamentary approval as a starting point for negotiations on the new bailout, which would be Greece’s third in five years.
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The raft of consumer tax increases and pension reforms will condemn Greeks to years of more economic hardship and has fueled anger among the Syriza party.
Greece’s Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras reads his notes during a parliament meeting in Athens, Thursday, July 16, 2015.
The vote came after an anti-austerity demonstration by about 12,000 protesters outside parliament degenerated into violence as the debate was getting underway Wednesday night.
Member of parliament voted 229-64 – with six abstentions – to approve the austerity measures, the BBC reported. He could eject the “objectors” in a cabinet reshuffle, but unless the European Central Bank props up the Greek banks in the next few days, people, ordinary people, are going to start running out of cash and food insecurity is an imminent threat for many. Former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis voted against. “But if something unexpected comes up, we don’t know how we will handle it. There is a sense of insecurity”.
Debt relief for Greece was the focus of a study released Tuesday by the global Monetary Fund, one of Greece’s creditors, which called the country’s debt burden “highly unsustainable“.
– Reform the tax code to raise additional revenue for the government.
“We do think there are a number of solutions that could be found-our objective here is the principle that British taxpayers’ money should not be put on the line for a financial package for the eurozone”, a spokesman for Prime Minister David Cameron said. The economy has shrunk by a quarter in the course of two previous credit packages and 25 percent of the population are unemployed.
A new Greek bailout will take about a month to complete but the country’s financial state is dire.
Riot police use their shields against petrol bombs lobbed by protesters during an anti-austerity protest on Thursday.
The speaker of the Parliament described what had been put upon Greece as a “crime against humanity” – a “social genocide”.
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More than half of Syriza’s 201 party officials, not all of whom are MPs, rejected the deal which would see Greece submit to controversial plans to privatise its assets, and “de-politicise” its public administration at the behest of Brussels.
