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PM cites voter support for measures on two-year election anniversary

PM cites voter support for measures on two-year election anniversary

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said his government’s re-election in September 2015 was tantamount to voter approval of a package of new measures agreed with the country’s creditors.

“It was the first time that the people’s right to know before deciding was respected. That they went to the polls after the deal and not before it. That they decided who they wanted to govern, knowing all of the facts,” Tsipras said in a statement marking the two-year anniversary of his re-election as prime minister after signing a new bailout deal in exchange for more tough austerity.

The leftists prime minister also used the occasion to lash out at the opposition.

“The elections gave us, for a second time, the mandate to pull the country out of the crisis. Us, not the old, worn and corrupted power system that brought the country to bankruptcy and cast it in the painful adventure of the memorandums,” said Tsipras of the September 20, 2015, polls that came just six months after left-wing SYRIZA swept into power, forming a coalition with nationalist Independent Greeks.

“For the past two years, the entire old establishment has been trying to erase that day, to erase the memory of the Greek people. Not just because it was defeated electorally, but mainly because it was defeated morally,” he added, referring to the opposition.

“Today, we are halfway through our term and can see the horizon clearly,” Tsipras said, dismissing calls for early elections. “We are still in the water and swimming, but our heads are out. We are breathing and we can see land clearly ahead. It is within reach.”

“In a year from today, we will have been in power for three years and will have left the memorandums behind us,” the prime minister said. “And we will have one more year ahead, the most creative of our term, to implement our plan for a new Greece.”

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