Zoe Konstantopoulou, a member of parliament for the left-wing, anti-bailout Greek party Syriza told CNBC that Greece’s bailout deal was a “death sentence for Greek society.”
With just three weeks to go until the Greeks vote in polls that many foreign analysts see as a choice between staying in the euro zone and leaving it, surveys showed that over 80 percent of Greeks want to keep the euro , but as many think that the country should renegotiate the terms of its bailout.
"Greeks are suffering and all of them want to change it for another agreement which would allow us to breathe," Konstantopoulou told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” in an interview in Athens.
Polls ahead of the elections on June 17 show that the pro-bailout party New Democracy are just ahead with 23.4 percent of voters' preferences compared to the anti-austerity Syriza party with 22.1 percent.
Rejecting the suggestion that a fifth of Greeks wouldn’t actually rip up the bailout deal for Greece, Konstantopoulou said that no Greek would choose austerity.
“There is no Greek that would go for enforcing this deal, Greeks are suffering, and all of them want to change it or rip it up for another agreement which will provide us with another agreement which would allow us to breathe,” she said.
She added that if the Syriza party won the elections it would mean ending the bailout deal, “which is no bailout deal at all,” and re-examining the country’s public debt.
“We believe that Greece has paid the public debt again and again, through very high interest which we have paid and re-paid and it’s time to consider another policy for Greece,” Konstantopoulou said.
She denied that bailout money was helping the country or could solve the euro zone crisis, saying that the deal was a breach of European Union legislation and that it only leads to a dead end for the country and its people.
“This path passes over the destruction of the Greek society - the Greeks are suffering, they are looking for food in the garbage - and this is no exit and bailout for a society,” Konstantopoulou said.
