[crdoconnor]

"Tsipras turning this into a "fundamental democratic issue" (his words) is the most shameful populist trick in the book."

This ("shameful populism!") is kind of just another way of saying "I don't like this democracy thing. Stop it!"

[carapat_virulat]

Yeah, most of the people that are against the referendum seem to follow some kind of reasoning like: "Syriza should take the decision by themselves so that when everything goes to hell only they are to blame and not the Greek electorate".

Which is strange because those who will have to endure the consequences of the decision will be the Greek people, so I don't understand what is so negative about involving them in the choice.

The bad thing is, both ways will probably mean hell to the Greeks so it's not like there is a good answer. Trying to pay an unpayable debt by destroying the economy will never work, and changing back to the drachma and devaluating the coin won't probably do much good in an economy like Greece where there are very limited exports.

I am not sure what was the underlying expectations of the austerity route, the official narrative of eventually paying the debt is obviously not going to happen, so I suppose that the underlying message was to play along for X more years until the EU decides to solve the mess at some point. But playing along any longer was not something that politicians could sell to the Greek electorate anymore. And the EU intervening and solving the mess is probably impossible to sell to the electorate of the strong economies of Europe like Germany, specially after so many years of "lazy greeks" headlines. So some sort of scenario like the current one was bound to happen sooner or later.