NEWS

Opposition parties slam gov’t for ‘not negotiating’

The failure of Greece’s international creditors to reach an agreement on releasing further crucial rescue loans for the country, and the government’s handling of negotiations with the creditors, were the focus of scathing criticism by opposition parties on Wednesday.

Alexis Tsipras, the head of the main leftist opposition SYRIZA, which is leading in opinion polls, said that Prime Minister Antonis Samaras had failed to rise to the occasion by not exploiting the negotiating power presented to it by the rift between eurozone and International Monetary Fund officials. “At a time of major clashes, he talks about technical difficulties and has fully assumed the position that Greece can make no demands,” Tsipras said.

He also accused the premier of losing “the last shred of credibility” after insisting that the country would run out of money on November 16 and charged that Samaras had become “an integral part of the pre-election campaign of Ms Merkel, who does not want to admit to the German people that she has made serious mistakes.”

Tsipras reiterated his party’s conviction that “Greece’s debt is not repayable,” adding that the release of another tranche of rescue funding would not secure the sustainability of the country’s debt burden and that the only option was “aggressive renegotiation.”

The rightwing Independent Greeks also interpreted the deadlock at Tuesday’s Eurogroup as a vindication of the party’s calls for a unilateral writeoff of Greece’s debt and a revocation of its bailout deals with foreign creditors. The party also slammed the government for failing to take a tough enough stance opposite the country’s troika of international lenders. “The position of the Greek government which has been characterized by the full surrender to the demands of the troika would be much more credible if statements uttered for domestic consumption were accompanied by a plan for national reaction to the dead-end of the memorandum,” said spokesman Christos Zois, referring to Greece’s foreign bailout program.

Communist Party (KKE) leader Aleka Papariga said that foreign creditors had only been interested in “dividing the losses” at Tuesday’s Eurogroup summit but predicted that they would reach a “fragile, temporary compromise.” She also repeated her party’s calls for the country’s “full disengagement” from the European Union which he described as “a wolves’ lair.”

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