The Troika will leave and the memorandums cancelled says SYRIZA

Speaking to SKAI TV, Lafazanis said that every government, “takes into account the international environment but decides based on its interests.”

“We are a sovereign and independent country and we will take our decisions and say that the troika and the memoranda are not in the interests of the country. And we will move ahead with the cancellation of the memoranda and the troika will leave Greece. That is a commitment that is linked to the interest of the country,” he said.

According to Lafazanis, “it goes without saying for a government to advance with unilateral actions,” because, “the theory that a country cannot take unilateral actions is unacceptable; that is an invention of the memorandum regime. Every democratic country, is sovereign and independent and makes decisions in the framework of its institutions what it will do and does not submit its decisions for approval to third parties.”

Finally, commenting on the recent heavy losses sustained on the Athens Stock Exchange he described it as, “a completely undesirable development,” adding that, “the markets are not a church, they seek to make profits and their profits go hand in hand with the pillaging of pensions and the collapse of a country. The markets want to profit – it is not something neutral and profiteering trends dominate. We don’t determine our politics from the stance of the markets.”

A SYRIZA government that may well come to power in February if snap elections are triggered by parliament’s inability to elect a new president of the republic by the end of the month, a fact many fear will throw the future of the financing of the Greek state into doubt, given the confrontational stance the party has taken to Greece’s lenders.

Lafazanis’s comments will do little to allay those fears. While he is one of the more radical voices within SYRIZA, and has made such assertions before, he remains the party’s parliamentary spokesperson.

Few of course would argue that Greece as a sovereign nation has the capacity to proceed with unilateral actions. Greece, however is not alone in having that capacity. As such a SYRIZA government decision to throw out the Memorandum may well lead to a decision on the part of the lenders to stop funding Greece with low interest loans, leaving Greece unable to meet its interest payments and other obligations, and SYRIZA’s ambitious program of boosting state spending not worth the paper it is written on.