HUFFINGTON POST COLUMN: …Europe’s desire for a change of government in Greece has become especially apparent in recent days. European Parliament president Martin Schulz told the German newspaper Handelsblatt that his confidence in the Greek government had hit “rock bottom” and that the government should resign if the public votes “yes” in Sunday’s referendum on whether to accept the creditors’ proposed bailout deal. Schulz suggested Greece’s creditors could negotiate the final details of a bailout deal with a provisional unelected technocratic Greek government in the interim period before new elections.
An anonymous senior German conservative took it one step further, saying many German lawmakers would not agree to a new bailout deal until the current, left-populist government leaves power. Among members of the conservative Christian Democratic Union, “there would be a lot of colleagues who would vote ‘no’ if [Greek finance minister Yanis] Varoufakis and [Greek prime minister Alexis] Tsipras are asking. For sure. Because there is simply no trust any more. They say, I am not going to give taxpayers’ money to Greece without a reliable partner,” he told the Times of London on Wednesday.
Calling Tsipras and Varoufakis “communists,” the lawmaker said, “We need a reliable partner who wants to do the job,” rather than the Syriza party. Although German chancellor Angela Merkel has left the door open to further negotiations, regardless of which Greek government is in power, she needs the votes of her conservative colleagues to get a bailout deal through the German parliament — a task that was never going to be easy… (more)
