Athens: Greek Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos urged lawmakers last night to show the world that Greece was serious about reining in its massive debt and remaining part of the euro.
As the government of Prime Minister Lucas Papademos battled to win approval for a loan and austerity package to avoid the country's collapse, Venizelos spoke in a fiery debate in parliament, where he warned that the country could either accept austerity measures or default and leave the euro.
"Everything needs to be completed before March 14, before public coffers go into the red, or we will default," he said.
Historical responsibility
"We have borrowed too much and now we have to move our debt from the markets to our Eurozone and international institutional partners," Venizelos said in Parliament yesterday, in comments televised live on state-run Vouli TV.
"The troika didn't create the problem, we created the problem."
With only weeks remaining before the country faces a €14.5 billion (Dh70 billion) bond payment, George Papandreou and Antonis Samaras, the leaders of the two largest parliamentary parties, urged support on Saturday for the bill as lawmakers, with an eye on elections as early as April, bristled at measures such as a 22 per cent reduction in the minimum wage, smaller pensions and immediate job cuts for as many as 15,000 state workers.
"We are looking the Greek people straight in the eye with full knowledge of our historical responsibility," Papademos said in a televised address on the eve of the vote. "The social costs that come with these measures are contained in comparison to the economic and social catastrophe that will follow if we don't adopt them."
Sacrifice
The measures equal about seven per cent of gross domestic product over three years and include a debt swap that would shave €100 billion off more than €200 billion of privately held debt.
"We have to sacrifice a lot so as not to sacrifice everything," Papandreou, leader of the Socialist Pasok party and the former prime minister, said on Saturday in Athens. "We must speak honestly and tell Greeks what bankruptcy really means. It means chaos."
Protesters gathered outside the Parliament building in central Athens yesterday as the final debate and vote on the bill got under way. Police in the city clashed with protesters on Friday after unions started a 48-hour strike against the austerity measures demanded by the so-called troika of international creditors monitoring Greece's progress.
