Of the 149 MPs who come from SYRIZA, 31 voted “no” and 5 “present” thus bringing the number of those who disagreed with the new measures to 36. The number is smaller by three from those who did the same in the preliminary voting over the deal between Greece and its creditors.
The former FinMin Y.Varoufakis decided to vote “yes” (he had voted no in the previous voting). In an article which he submitted exclusively to ThePressProject.gr, Mr.Varoufakis explains that while he is certain that the new memorandum is “designed to fail” he will vote for it in order to provide support to the Prime Minister and the present FinMin E.Tsakalotos.
In her address to the Greek Parliament, Z.Konstantopoulou, stated that the goal of European institutions is to blackmail the government into “disgrace and annulment”. She went on to ask that “we must not continue talking about a one way path. Every time that a wall tumbles down, the rest must rise. I trust SYRIZA’s solidarity and coherence”.
In his speech, the Prime Minister clarified that a Grexit “was not a proud, patriotic choice”. He was obviously thinking of those SYRIZA MPs who were planning to vote “no” when he said that “the left in government is not about us holding high places, it is a fort which fights for our people’s interests.”
The leader of the opposition, E.Meimarakis chose to speak in relatively low key tone. He nevertheless stated that the deal which was achieved by the government, was much worse than the one that his government was ready to close. He also claimed that during his party’s ruling a GDP surplus was achieved, and this is now lost due to SYRIZA’s decision to bring the country to elections.