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 Relations are tense between Athens and its creditors, on whom it
depends for money to stay afloat. Greece, which has not received any
bailout funds since last August, is fast running out of cash and
struggling to strike a deal on reforms needed to unblock that aid.
"After five years of parliamentary silence on the major issues that
caused the bailout catastrophe, today we commence a procedure that
will give answers to the questions concerning the Greek people,"
Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras told lawmakers before the vote in the
early hours of Tuesday.
The committee, proposed by Tsipras's leftist Syriza party and its
coalition partner, the right-wing Independent Greeks, will look into
how Greece entered the agreements and any other issue relating to
the bailouts and their implementation.
This includes the revision of the 2009 budget deficit, whose wildly
gyrating figures triggered the country's fiscal crisis, a debt
restructuring in 2012 and the recapitalisation of the country's
banks.
The proposal was approved with 156 of the 250 lawmakers present
voting in favor, 72 against and 22 abstaining.
Former prime minister Antonis Samaras, now the main opposition
leader, accused Tsipras of trying to distract the public from the
pressing issues facing the economy.
"Indeed we will need a new committee... (to examine) the credit
event (crunch) which you are bringing closer... and for the new
bailout you are leading us toward," Samaras said.
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A fierce critic of Greece's bailouts and the unpopular austerity
attached to them, Tsipras had made setting up such a committee one
of his pre-election pledges and has repeatedly promised to scrap
measures such as wage and pension cuts.
Greeks have been hit hard by austerity imposed on them under the
bailout agreements over the last five years. Greece is only just
emerging from years of economic depression and roughly one in four
Greeks is still unemployed.
In March, parliament passed an anti-poverty bill offering food
stamps and free electricity to the poor to tackle what Tsipras calls
the country's humanitarian crisis.
The bailout committee follows a parliamentary panel set up to audit
ballooning debt and another to demand reparations for the Nazi
occupation, a claim which has strained relations between Greece and
its biggest creditor, Germany.
(Editing by Louise Ireland)
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