Millions of Greeks cast their votes yesterday in a crucial referendum that will decide whether or not Greeks choose to accept international creditors’ proposals for more austerity in exchange for rescue loans needed to avoid default and a banking collapse.

Polling booths opened at 7AM local time (04:00 GMT), with opinion polls showing the nation of 11 million people evenly split between “Yes” and “No” vote.

There are 10 million Greeks eligible to vote.

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has urged people to vote “No”, saying it would strengthen his left-wing government’s hand in talks with international creditors who are owed billions of euros.

Tsipras remained steadfast after casting his vote at a polling station in Athens yesterday morning.

“No one can ignore the message of determination of a people taking its destiny in its own hands,” he told reporters.

Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis has also cast his ballot, telling the Germany’s Bild newspaper that he will resign if Greeks vote “yes” for the aid-for-reforms package, reiterating comments he has made before.

Asked if he would really resign if the outcome of the referendum was “yes”, he told Bild: “Absolutely.”

“There’ll not be a majority for ‘yes’,” he added.

On Friday, more than 25,000 people welcomed Tsipras at a rally in Athens where he sought to revive support for the “No” vote.

A rival rally of 22,000 “Yes” supporters shouted pro-European slogans and voiced fears of a so-called “Grexit” from the eurozone and a return to Greece’s former currency, the drachma, if Tsipras got his way.

In an opinion poll released on Friday, Greeks were almost evenly split over the referendum, with 41.5 percent saying they will vote in favour of accepting the latest bailout proposals and 40.2 percent saying they will vote “No”.

The poll showed that 10.9 percent remained undecided, while the rest said they would abstain or leave their ballots blank.

After failing to reach a deal with its creditors last weekend on an extension of its bailout programme Greece’s ruling Syriza government closed the country’s banks and imposed capital controls until July 6.

The cash-strapped nation defaulted on an IMF payment of $1.8bn on June 30.

There have been rallies in Dublin and Istanbul in support of the Greek government ahead of the key vote.

Hundreds of demonstrators also marched in the Portuguese capital, Lisbon, to show their solidarity with Athens’ efforts to fight the proposed austerity measures.

Portugal, like Greece, had to ask for an international bailout in 2011 to avoid bankruptcy.

After two bailouts totalling 240bn euros ($266bn) and six years of depression, spending cuts and lost jobs, Greece teeters on the edge of collapse.

Tsipras says the vote is needed to force creditors to finally accept his key demand of another round of debt relief to save Greece from financial meltdown and possibly crashing out of the euro.

EU leaders have warned that a “No” victory could cause Greece to crash out of the eurozone. — Aljazeera

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