Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras leaves the presidential palace after a swearing in ceremony of the new finance minister Euclid Tsakalotos yesterday.
By Mary Dejevsky/Athens
You can ignore what a government says, but you can’t ignore the voice of the nation. So said Alexis Tsipras when he went to cast his referendum vote. It was a comment worthy of the prime minister of the country that gave the world democracy. What exactly the voters have said, however, might not be quite as clear as he would have liked.
Through the evening, as the evidence mounted for a No vote - which, in the confusing world of current Greek politics, was essentially a Yes for the stance taken by Tsipras in the talks with EU and international institutions so far - it was possible to sense the trepidation that has gripped the rest of Europe for the past week mounting too. Within an hour of the polls closing, the French president and German chancellor announced they would be meeting in Paris on Monday, the choice of venue being the more diplomatic option, given Greek sensitivities. George Osborne had earlier sown concern where there had seemed to be none, by telling the BBC that no country was immune to the Greek debt crisis, including the UK.
But how much of a mandate does the Greek prime minister have for hanging even tougher in negotiations now? The referendum result appears to have been more decisive than most opinion polls had forecast. By 21:00 Greek time, it was reported that every one of Greece’s electoral districts had voted No. But what does even that degree of unanimity really change? The victory for No came against a turnout of little more than 50%. That hardly suggests mass engagement, even if the margin was clear.
In the short term, the vote has saved the Greek government and given an element of certainty. The finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, had said he would resign in the event of a Yes vote, and Tsipras’s own position would have been in jeopardy. But does the vote really strengthen his position in Brussels?
It is underlining the obvious, but this was a Greek vote on an issue that is European. Tsipras was already negotiating from the position of having won a general election. He may have hoped that a specific mandate for extracting a better deal from the EU would bolster his claim. But that would suggest a big misreading of the balance of power.
Before Greece voted, officials in Brussels were arguing that the referendum question was invalid, because the offer - as made at 11th-hour talks the previous weekend - had expired when those talks broke down. It is hard to believe that the same offer will not now be revived in some form, but Tsipras may be made to work hard to achieve that. Whether it can be improved (from the Greek point of view) could be another matter.
And the real difficulty for Tsipras may not be the Germans so much as the other countries, who have made no secret of their reluctance to soften the terms on offer. There is a feeling that Greece - thanks to a flamboyant prime minister and a stubborn attitude, plus the determination of Germany and others to “save” the euro at almost any price - has been treated as a special case. Among those who will resist further concessions are not just those, such as Ireland, emerging successfully from their own painful bailouts, but “new” Europeans - such as Slovakia and the Baltic states - who made enormous sacrifices, especially in the case of Latvia, to meet the conditions for joining the euro and resent any watering down of the terms.
Only one question was really settled on Sunday: the Greek government has survived, and Brussels must deal with Athens as it is, rather than as it would like it to be. The bigger questions - can Greece remain in the euro, or even in the European Union - remain unanswered. As does the most pressing for most Greeks: when will the banks reopen, and how many euros can we withdraw?
Having said this, any nation that can arrange a referendum at a week’s notice, conduct it competently, and produce a result before midnight, possesses a degree of civic organisation that many would envy. In the manner of the vote, as much as the result, there has to be hope for Greece. - Guardian News & Media
