Varoufakis said that he is stepping down from his post as the Finance Minister of Greece as some members of EU were not willing to welcome him at the negotiation table any longer.
The bike-riding, leather-jacket donning finance minister of Greece Yanis Varoufakis had threatened to resign if Greece voted 'yes' in the historic referendum on the bailout conditions meted out by creditors including the IMF and the ECB. In a massive vindication to PM Alexis Tsipras and his stance, Greeks voted a resolute 'no'. However, EU has extracted its pound of flesh.
Varoufakis said that he is stepping down from his post as the Finance Minister of Greece as some members of EU were not willing to welcome him at the negotiation table any longer. He said, "I consider it my duty to help Alexis Tsipras exploit, as he sees fit, the capital that the Greek people granted us through yesterday’s referendum. And I shall wear the creditors’ loathing with pride."
Taking a jibe at his Eurogroup 'partners' for his 'absence' from any further meetings, he said he is leaving the finance ministry. "We of the Left know how to act collectively with no care for the privileges of office. I shall support fully Prime Minister Tsipras, the new Minister of Finance, and our government," he wrote on his blog.
An accidental economist, Varoufakis, 53, has been the finance minister of Greece for only four months before drawing curtains. These four months, however, were tumultuous at best.
Varoufakis made it clear from the beginning that he is not going to bow down to Greece's creditors in this ideological war that spawned between the drivers of austerity and the left-run Greece.
The man turned heads when he reached the steps of 11 Downing Street in February this year to meet with George Osborne in a leather jacket.
The Telegraph equated 'unbecoming dressing style of a finance minister 'Varoufakis' with Mahatma Gandhi and said, "For Mr Varoufakis, once an academic at the universities of Essex and East Anglia, to have turned up looking too much like the besuited politicians he so bitterly opposes, would have been like Gandhi dropping his outfit of dhoti, shawl and sandals for his visit to Downing Street in 1931 and donning the lawyer’s suit and wing-collars of his youth."
The Telegraph went on to say, "Mr Varoufakis at least is one revolutionary leopard who hasn’t changed all his spots."
The man arrived at his first day at work as the finance minister of an economy on the verge of exiting the Eurozone on a dazzling Yamaha motorbike which got him the title of the 'coolest politician in Greece'.
The shaven-head economist with no formal training in the subject occupied the top spot in vote tally in January elections that brought Tsipras-led Syriza to the centre-point of Greek politics.
Varoufakis has been a loud protester of the bailout plan drawn by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and European Central Bank (ECB) and has been speaking against the austerity drive that the Eurozone has been demanding from Greece for a long time.
Not only did he reject the claims made by the creditors, his defiance to their terms has brought Greece to the brink of an unceremonious exit from the Eurozone.
Although with Greeks now firmly backing the government to get a deal that will ease debt payments and a new bailout package, the man who took up the job as his 'moral responsibility' will not be around to engineer the future course of Greece's economic revival.
Perhaps this is how Greek tragedies are made.
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