Скачать или смотреть LEFT WING PARTY LEADER VOWS TO ABANDON BAILOUT AGREEMENT

(1 Jun 2012) The head of Greece's Radical Left Coalition, whose strong gains in last month's elections deepened concerns over his nation's economic future, vowed on Friday to cancel Greece's international bailout agreement if he wins an upcoming repeat ballot.
Alexis Tsipras, whose party came second in the inconclusive May 6 polls, said there was no way to partially implement the terms of the bailout.
Presenting his Syriza party's economic programme, he said he would seek to repeal the bailout terms, which have included deep spending cuts and stiff tax hikes and have been blamed for a prolonged recession.
The debt-strapped country holds its second election in six weeks on June 17. It was called after the centre-right New Democracy party won the May 6 poll but without enough votes to form a government, and coalition talks collapsed.
"The first act of a government of the left, as soon as the new Parliament is sworn in, will be a cancellation of the bailout and its implementation laws," Tsipras said to rapturous applause.
Tsipras' Syriza party has been neck-and-neck with New Democracy in most recent opinion polls. The socialist PASOK party, which came to power in a landslide in 2009 elections, saw its support crumble on May 6, coming in third place with a meagre 13 percent compared to New Democracy's 18.9 and Syriza's 16.8 percent.
Tsipras said the bailout agreement is a mechanism of definitive bankruptcy and pushing the country to a voluntary withdrawal from the eurozone
He predicted that under the bailout terms, Greece would be unable to return to the markets, from which it has been blocked out since mid-2010 by sky-high borrowing rates, for a decade.
"There is no more or less bad memorandum," he said, referring to the bailout agreement. "You either implement the memorandum, or you cancel it. We will cancel it."
Tsipras said that if he wins enough votes to form a leftwing government, he will seek a Europe-wide deal to drastically reduce the debt payments, or seek a debt moratorium.
People listening to Tsipras speak said they believed he and his party were most suited to take Greece out of its crisis.
But George Tzogopouos, a research fellow at the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy said the Syriza plan was not realistic.
"It seems that there will be a big fight until the very last day as to who will win the next election, whether it will be the conservative New Democracy or the leftist Syriza party. What we know right now is that we will once again need a coalition government so the party which will win the election has to be prepared to find allies and form a government," Tzogopoulos said.
Results of a poll published on Friday, the last day before a two-week pre-election ban takes effect, showed Syriza pulling ahead, projecting it to win 31.5 percent of the vote compared to New Democracy at 25.5 percent.


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