Grexit would not be a ‘disaster,’ says Lafazanis

As a pre-election TV spot showing Popular Unity party chief Panayiotis Lafazanis asking a cabbie to take him to the national mint grabbed the attention of social media on Tuesday, the hardline leftist told media at the Thessaloniki International Fair that an exit from the eurozone and a return to a national currency would not be a “disaster.”

“We are giving battle against what’s left of SYRIZA and against all the pro-memorandum forces,” said Lafazanis, who broke away from Alexis Tsipras’s Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA) last month over the former prime minister’s agreement to a third bailout deal with international creditors.

Denying that the Left Platform, a group of hardliners in SYRIZA that had been headed by Lafazanis, brought down the leftist party and prompted snap elections, the Popular Unity leader said that “we cannot cooperate with parties and governments that support memorandums.”

“There are no good or bad memorandum, no leftwing or rightwing memorandums; all memorandums harm Greece,” Lafazanis, who has championed a Eurozone exit and a return to the drachma, said in his scheduled pre-election press conference at the northern port city.

“I am not saying that we can pick a magical solution out of our pocket; the choice of a national currency would certainly have difficulties… but no difficulties greater than those created by the memorandums,” Lafazanis added.