Two ex- Greek prime ministers, who oversaw the country’s descent into austerity policies, Kostas Karamanlis and Antonis Samaras of the right-wing New Democracy party, have both separately urged Greeks to vote yes.
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Such a result would plunge Greece and the eurozone “into the unknown”, French president Francois Hollande said on an African visit.
“If it’s the ‘Yes, ‘ even if it’s on the basis of proposals that have already expired, negotiations can resume and I imagine be quickly concluded”, he said. Its up to the Greeks to respond..
Capital controls are in place across the country and banks have remained shut to all but pensioners this week with citizens limited to a €60 withdrawal per day.
Mr Tsipras said Europe must stop acting in an “undemocratic way” and sought to reassure Greeks that their bank deposits were safe.
“We are making an additional effort”, he said.
It is now without external financial assistance for the first time in five years, while at home the banks will be closed all week, although around a thousand branches opened on Wednesday to allow the elderly to receive pension payments.
The question on Sunday’s ballot is whether they accept or reject a reform proposal made by creditors during negotiations last week.
But that particular proposal is no longer on the table. Expressing confidence in the Greek people to vote no, Varoufakis said that the referendum question is not about whether or not Greece will leave the euro, but deciding the best way to stay in it – either though a sustainable or unsustainable debt deal.
As the central bankers gathered in Frankfurt, a defiant Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras urged Greeks to reject an worldwide bailout deal, wrecking any prospect of repairing relations with Europe before the Sunday vote. “That suggestion is simply wrong”, Dijsselbloem, who is also the Dutch finance minister, said before a parliamentary committee in the Netherlands.
However, he said he was “quite confident” that the Greek people would back the government’s call for a no vote. Analysts, including Carsten Brzeski, chief economist at ING-DiBa bank, said that while the eurozone would likely not let Greece fall in the event of a “No” vote, “too much trust has been destroyed” by Tsipras in the negotiations.
Meanwhile, many ATMs had run out of €20 notes, meaning the maximum they would dispense per day was one €50 note per bank card, effectively cutting the amount of cash Greeks have access to. “I personally will not sign another extend and pretend (agreement)”. The queues are nothing next to all the suicides, the soup kitchens and the homeless on the streets of Athens..
Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis stepped up his opposition to accepting the creditors’ demands. Tsipras has implied he could do the same.
In order to qualify for aid under the rules of eurozone’s bailout fund for states, Greece would need to show that its debt is sustainable and that it only faces a liquidity crunch.
So Greece got the money, but, to justify these bailouts to voters in the richer eurozone countries (who were really footing the bill), the Greeks had to accept severe austerity measures.
“I’m going to vote “Yes” because we’re more secure in Europe…”
But German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble was clear that no deal was imminent before the referendum on the creditors’ proposals on Sunday.
The Eurogroup is a meeting of the finance ministers of the euro-using nations of the European Union.
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On Monday, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker made a new offer to Greece. As long as it is in arrears on the payment to the International Monetary Fund, one of the country’s main creditors, Greece can not get any more money from the organisation.
