It is not only on the streets that tensions are on the rise, reports our correspondent Helena Smith.
In parliament, where party leaders have rushed to convene emergency meetings, the rhetoric is also becoming ever more shrill.
Addressing her MPs, the newly elected leader of the left-wing Pasok party, Fofi Gennimatas, said it was important the referendum did not take place .
She said:
“They are gambling with the country. The real question is ‘yes or no’ to Europe.”
Greece’s defense minister Panos Kammenos, who heads the government’s junior partner, the right-wing nationalist Independent Greeks party, has been busy talking to reporters this morning and has heartedly denied that Greeks have been posed with the dilemma of having to choose between the euro or drachma.
“We tried to compromise with lenders, this is about national dignity, about ending an era of humiliation of Greeks,” he said as he made his way through a crush of reporters outside parliament.
Minister of state Alekos Flambouraris, widely seen as prime minister Alexis Tsipras’ mentor, rejected suggestions that Greeks were now being forced to make a choice about their future in the single currency. ‘That is propaganda,” he said. “This is part of the negotiating .”
The far right Golden Dawn leader Nikos Michaloliakos has also waded in saying his party will call on Greeks to reject creditors’ proposals when the referendum is held next Sunday. “We’ll call on Greeks to say no to the profiteers and all those who for five years have wanted to humiliate our homeland,” he railed in typically combattive mood outside the 300-member House.
MPs representing the conservative New Democracy party, meanwhile, have been busy lambasting the government for calling the referendum but predicted that Greeks would say ‘a big yes’ to Europe and the euro.
