Makes perfect sense in context. Tsipras's "Coalition of the Radical Left" got elected back in January on an anti-"austerity" (pro-gimmie-gimmie) platform, which was a license to unrepentantly demagogue fiscal responsibility and demand more E.U. handouts in perpetuity. Cutting off the access of Greek citizens to their liquidity - which they already knew was coming or there wouldn't have been the run on Greek banks - will piss them off even more, and that anger will be directed not at the stupendously irresponsible Tsipras, but at Greece's E.U. creditors, most especially Germany. Which makes the timing of his demagogic anti-E.U. referendum all the more "convenient," almost as if it's the excuse to which he's been building up to take Greece out of the E.U. and into an alliance with Putin's Russia.
However, recent polling seems to indicate that that may be more of a gamble for Tsipras than he may have anticipated:
Two opinion polls published Sunday indicated that more Greeks want to stay in the eurozone and make a deal with creditors than want a rupture with the country's European partners. Both polls were conducted before Tsipras' referendum call, but they provide an indication of public sentiment.
In the poll by Alco for the Proto Thema paper, 57% said they believed Greece should make a deal while 29% wanted a rupture of ties. A Kapa Research poll for To Vima newspaper found that 47.2% would vote in favor of a new, painful agreement with Greece's creditors, compared to 33% who would vote no and 18.4% undecided.
3-2 against bailing in one survey, 2-1 against it in the other. Which leaves the question of whether Tsipras would abide by the voters' expressed will and meekly knuckle under or flip his own people and the Euros the bird and just pull a coup. He is, after all, an awfully long way down this revolutionary road to this game of fiscal chicken. He may decide that he's gone too far to turn back now and be humiliated.
- Me, a week ago
Looks like the polls were wildly wrong. Either that, or this referendum wasn't what we thought it was:
Greeks voted overwhelmingly on Sunday to reject terms of a bailout, risking financial ruin in a show of defiance that could splinter Europe.
Or just detach Greece from it. Which would be a net-plus for the rest of the Continent, at least financially. "Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out" is, I believe, the appropriate expression.
With nearly half of the votes counted, official figures showed 61% of Greeks rejecting the bailout offer. An official interior ministry projection confirmed the figure as close to the expected final tally.
The astonishingly strong victory by the 'No' camp overturned opinion polls that had predicted an outcome too close to call. It leaves Greece in uncharted waters: risking financial and political isolation within the euro zone and a banking collapse if creditors refuse further aid.
But for millions of Greeks the outcome was an angry message to creditors that Greece can longer accept repeated rounds of austerity that, in five years, had left one in four without a job. Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has denounced the price paid for aid as "blackmail" and a national "humiliation".
With a communist regime already in place in Athens, the possibility of a rigged election is always a strong possibility. But in this instance I don't think that's likely to be the case. We've repeatedly seen in our own country (2008 and 2012 come instantly to mind) that voters often cast their ballots foolishly and irrationally, and are even less likely to correct past mistakes because it would require them to first admit their own in electing the government that duped them and screwed things up in the first place. And it doesn't really take a whole lot of duping to produce such results, and most voters are ignorant, easily manipulated, and corruptly prone to vote themselves goodies from the public treasury at their countrymen's expense at every opportunity. An impulse that leftwing demagogues usually only have to get out in front of to exploit.
The fact of the matter is that the Greek people have bankrupted themselves and are angrily demanding to be spared the consequences of their own greedy foolishness at the expense of the German creditors who foolishly bailed them out in the recent past instead of forcing them to clean up their own mess and endure the "withdrawal pains" in order to reinforce the lesson. And now they'll get what they deserve: a calamitous descent into even greater poverty and tyranny.
Small wonder that Proverbs 16:18 says, "Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before stumbling." And how appropriate it is that the birthplace of democracy would succumb to its worst excesses and exemplify what Winston Churchill once said about the strongest argument against democracy being a five-minute conversation with the average voter.
Big winner out of this mess: Alexis Tsipras, who doesn't have to bother with a coup de tat to flip Greece from the European Union to Vladimir Putin's neo-Warsaw Pact.
No wonder he was grinning.
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