GREECE has thrown the eurozone into fresh turmoil by allowing voters the chance to reject the emergency bailout package agreed in Brussels last week.Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou stunned European capitals yesterday by saying he would hold a referendum on the details tortuously negotiated by eurozone leaders.
The announcement, made after European financial markets had closed, effectively gives Greek voters a veto on the deal and raises the spectre of financial chaos across Europe if they reject it.
Mr Papandreou gave no date or other details on the proposed referendum, which would be the first in Greece since 1974, when a landslide abolished the monarchy vote months after the collapse of a military dictatorship.
"This will be the referendum: The citizen will be called upon to say a big 'yes' or a big 'no' to the new loan arrangement," he told Socialist members of parliament.
"This is a supreme act of democracy and patriotism for the people to make their own decision . . . We have a duty to promote the role and responsibility of the citizen."
He said he would seek a vote of confidence in parliament, which could begin today and conclude late on Friday.
The referendum move allows Socialist MPs - vilified by an increasingly hostile public during months of strikes, sit-ins and violent protests over rounds of austerity measures - to pass the responsibility for the country's fate to the people.
EU leaders carved out a second aid package for Greece at a summit in Brussels last week, after
Mr Papandreou scraped together parliamentary approval for the second round of austerity measures in four months. Greece will receive E130 billion ($172bn) in public funds plus a 50 per cent write-down on debt, following a fully taxpayer-funded package of E110bn extended in May last year.
Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos said the referendum was called for after opposition parties failed to side with the government in negotiations between Greece and other eurozone members.
"Greece is living through a drama from which it must be released by asking the people to express its will," he told parliament.
"Each citizen will make his own decision, with responsibility, in a process that will provide a national sense of relief and recovery."
He told private Antenna television: "It is very clear: the new agreement will be submitted to parliament for approval and then submitted to the judgment of the Greek people . . . the people can say 'no' but must bear in mind the consequences of that decision."
Mr Papandreou's government has seen its majority reduced to three seats and its approval ratings plummet amid austerity measures that are sending the country into a fourth year of recession next year.
The EU statistics agency Euro stat estimated in a report yesterday that unemployment in Greece reached 17.6 per cent in July - higher than the Greek estimate for that month of 16.5 per cent.
"This is just the latest twist in the unfolding Greek tragedy," said Sony Kapoor, the managing director of Re-Define, a London-based think tank.
"With an irresponsible opposition that is promising Greek voters the moon, it is very difficult to see how this referendum could be won under the ongoing gut-wrenching austerity."
Germany's Finance Ministry noted yesterday "the summit of the euro zone's heads of states and governments . . . formulated clear expectations.
"Accordingly, the second aid package for Greece shall be finalised by year's end. At the moment, we are all working on this with high intensity."
Nevertheless, what seems to be going on relative to Greece in particular ties in so well with the Bible prophecies that it is really quite uncanny in so many senses.
Someone noted other day on the Internet that where it began all might end. There seems to be more than a couple of examples of the tie in between the different cultures mentioned in the scriptures with what is happening in the news broadcasts of today.
With the original of the scriptures translated from the Greek and the Hebrew into the English that is only the starters.
What we are looking at in that example is the current turmoil that Greece is facing coupled with Gods prophetic clock of Israel.
Then we have the book of the Revelation translated into the Greek by the prophet John after God, and then Jesus, and then the angels spoke to him, after having been exiled the Greek Island of Patmos there in 69AD, and so the list goes on.
However, is the Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou only buying time so that he can forego the inevitable elections with the result being that he may be able to stay in power a little bit longer that what he would under normal circumstances?
Alternatively, are there much more serious and sinister secrets that are laying in the background that have not been revealed as yet, such as wanting to make this bailout package fail so that more and more power could be handed over to the Antichrist then giving him the pretext to start and win a Third World War?
That is the provocative question that only time is really going to provide an answer. Whatever is going to be the outcome of all of this, and no matter what angle we are to approach this from, there are no winners here anywhere, just losers.
As that is the case, one may then rightly ask does Papandreou want to latest measures to fail or succeed as it really seems like he wants what has gone down to fail, and fail big time.
