Greek Voters Send Decisive Message to European Leaders: No Deal (Updated)

UPDATE: When the final tally came in on Sunday evening, Greece’s financial future still hung in the balance, but the results of the referendum didn’t. The Los Angeles Times weighed in about the EU-shaking “oxi” (“no”) vote after the count became official, and Greeks celebrated their defiance in the face of pressure to take the bailout deal and preserve the eurozone’s precarious status quo.

UPDATE: As The Washington Post reported, after Sunday’s vote, Greek opposition leader and former Prime Minister Antonis Samaras announced he would resign after his campaign failed to sway the vote in favor of taking the bailout option. “I understand that our great party needs a new start,” Samaras said.

Meanwhile, according to The Associated Press, German and French leaders put out a call for a eurozone summit to convene Tuesday to discuss the Greek debt issue in light of Sunday’s results.

For his part, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras took to Twitter to register his reactions to the referendum, declaring: “The Greek ppl responded to real question at hand: What kind of Europe do we want? The answer: A Europe of solidarity & #democracy.”

If there was any lingering question about where the majority of Greeks stood on the question of accepting the deal drummed up by European creditors to try to contain Greece’s ongoing financial crisis, early returns from Sunday’s referendum on the bailout package soundly dispelled it.

In other words, that would be a no.

The New York Times brought word as the news about the vote results began to break in Greece later that day:

As celebrants began to gather in Athens’s central Syntagma Square, the Interior Ministry projected that more than 60 percent of the voters had said no to a deal that would have imposed greater austerity measures on the beleaguered country.

With 60 percent of the vote tallied, the actual count tracked the projections, with 61 percent voting no and 39 percent yes, the Interior Ministry said.

The no votes carried virtually every district in the country, handing a sweeping victory to Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, a leftist who came to power in January vowing to reject new austerity measures that he called an injustice and economically self-defeating. Late last month he walked away from negotiations in frustration at the creditors’ demands, called the referendum and urged Greeks to vote no as a way to give him more bargaining power.

–Posted by Kasia Anderson