Greek party vows to scrap bailout deal

Alexis Tsipras, the head of Greece’s leftist Syriza party (file photo)

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2012/06/12/245915/greek-party-vows-scrap-bailout/

The head of Greece's leftist Syriza party says, if elected in Sunday's parliamentary elections, he will scrap the country’s bailout deal with the European Union and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

"The bailout deal is already in the past. It will be history for good on Monday," AFP quoted Alexis Tsipras as saying on Tuesday.

"On Monday, the forces of internal corruption and global usury will stop writing [bailout deal] because our people are about to write history," he added.

Syriza, which catapulted to second place behind the conservative New Democracy party in inconclusive parliamentary elections on May 6, could win up to a third of the vote on Sunday, according to opinion polls.

Accordingly, the next government may choose not to keep up with the austerity measures, required to qualify Athens for receiving its second financial aid package, containing EUR hundreds of millions, which is part of the bailout deal.

Greece has been the epicenter of the eurozone debt crisis and is experiencing its fifth year in recession. One fifth of Greek workers are unemployed, banks have become shaky, and pensions and salaries have been slashed by up to 40 percent.

The package is aimed at bailing the cash-stripped South European country out of the worsening crisis.

Syriza’s opposition to the bailout funds has also sparked fears that the country could be forced to leave the eurozone and raised doubts about the single European currency’s future.

Tsipras stated that the country can stay a member of the eurozone, but pointed out, "We will not go to [EU peers] with a sense of bullying. We will go to persuade them that a eurozone country is falling apart from [their] options."

"If a eurozone member is brought to collapse...the fire burning in southern European countries will become an inferno...and will spread to the centre, the eurozone will fall apart," he warned.