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Amanpour

Greece Delays Delivery of Proposed Reforms; Inside the Halls of Power; Imagine a World

Aired February 23, 2015 - 14:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN HOST (voice-over): Tonight: after striking a deal to stay afloat, Greece delays delivery of its proposed economic reform

and I'll speak live to the finance minister, who's standing by in Athens.

Also ahead on the program:

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Yes, we can.

AMANPOUR (voice-over): The man behind President Obama's most famous campaign slogan, David Axelrod, the believer.

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AMANPOUR: Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the program. I'm Christiane Amanpour.

Now Europe is still waiting for Greece to put its austerity reform plan on the table. The deadline was tonight but it is already slipping. A deal

between the Greek finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, and his country's European and IMF creditors, which was struck on Friday, was designed to

avert immediate disaster by ensuring that badly needed money will keep flowing to Athens for another four months by extending a 240 billion euro

bailout.

In exchange, the left-leaning Syriza government said that it would come up with its own way of structuring austerity, a prescription that it was in

fact elected to dismantle.

So exactly what has been achieved?

Let us ask the Greek finance minister and main negotiator, Yanis Varoufakis, who joins me now live from Athens.

Minister, welcome back to the program.

So what gives? You have now delayed laying out this economic reform, your austerity proposals.

Why?

YANIS VAROUFAKIS, GREEK FINANCE MINISTER: I'm desperately sorry, Christiane, but I'm going to disappoint you. I haven't delayed it.

AMANPOUR: So it was tonight. It was today, the deadline. It was today.

VAROUFAKIS: Well, let me inform you, let me just be your reporter just for one brief second. We have delivered it. And as we speak, my deputy is in

communication with members of the institutions and they were actually -- they are -- they were the ones who requested that we deliver the official

report or document tomorrow morning. But we were ready as of this morning, actually.

AMANPOUR: Minister, just try to make me fully understand because everyone's reporting that you're not going to be giving it until tomorrow.

That's one issue I want you to clarify for me.

But the other main issue is obviously what are these reforms?

What can you tell the Europeans, your creditors, after this deal that you struck on Friday?

VAROUFAKIS: OK, let's get out the nonsense other -- let's get it out of the way.

There was no delay. As I said, we were ready this morning. And it was submitted right on time. We -- it was a request from the other side that

we did not submit the formal, the official document until tomorrow. So let's get this out of the way, shall we? And let's concentrate on what

matters, which is the second part of your question.

Christiane, the most important thing to note is that something remarkable has happened in Europe as a result the discussions between our side, the

Greek government, and our partners.

What we have decided collectively to do in a sense, at least this is how we see it, we decided that the country that was caught in a terrible crisis

and which for five years has been outlying implementing a program, an economic and reform package that in our estimation has failed to put -- to

draw a line on the -- on this downward spiral, we decided that this autopilot austerity is finished and that we, the new freshly elected

government are going to be given an opportunity to script a new package of reforms and suggestions regarding how to reform our structural economy, our

state and on questions of fiscal adjustment, which is exactly what we're doing.

This is a very exciting moment because we get a chance to be the coauthors of our fate.

AMANPOUR: Well, that is very exciting for you and it's a very good spin maybe.

Give me the details of the reform because what I understand is that it is still austerity; you still have to make some pretty brutal adjustments.

VAROUFAKIS: Well, let me be specific on this.

The reforms that we have tabled concern corruption, tax evasion and even worse problem, tax immunity, which concerns the well-to-do in this country.

It -- there are provisions for dealing with the non-performing loans of the banking system, which are preventing the credit service from functioning

properly.

There is a very important chapter on the humanitarian crisis that has emerged as a result of the failure of the policies of the last five years.

There is provision for restructuring the mass media, which I think you would interested in and the way in which they are unfortunately, they're

woven with what we call the triangle of sin, procurement, a number of areas in which there is corruption. It's a very comprehensive list of reforms

that this government is intent on. Regarding austerity, this package is not so much geared towards dealing with questions of fiscal policy, but I

can assure that as part of this deliberation process, our part is that -- partners have agreed that the fiscal targets for this year, which would be

equivalent to even harsher austerity than what we had in the last five years, these have been waived. And we are beginning a very interesting

conversation about debt restructuring as well as plenary surpluses; in other words, the level of austerity of the next few years.

So this is a fresh start, both for us and for our partners. And this is no spin.

AMANPOUR: A fresh start and, by the way, I do notice you're having some technical difficulties. If you feel you need to hold the earpiece in,

please do so we can continue the conversation.

Your people are -- elected you precisely to get rid of austerity. You will continue to have to belt tighten and there is also already resistance

amongst your party. Even the German finance minister has asked how will you sell this to the very electorate who put you into power to get rid of

all this as you pledged to do?

How are you going to make them believe now this is OK?

VAROUFAKIS: We're doing it and we're doing it very effectively. So the earpiece is going to have be kept in view, quite right.

Number one, we have managed for the next four months, which is the duration of this interim period that we have agreed upon there will be no pension

cuts. There will be no increases in value-added tax unlike the previous government's commitments.

There will be a series of poverty alleviation moves and the most important thing, we are turning a page, as I was saying before, whereby now the Greek

government, the Greek people are going to become the coauthors of the program of the contract (INAUDIBLE) like to call it that will shape the

next few years.

I can assure you that people on the street are elated by this return to dignity of a people, the Greek people, who, for five years, have been

treated as a debt colony and been subjected to an auto-pilot of austerity and reforms that were never attacking the serious sources of corruption and

tax evasion and the various malignancies of the Greek economy.

AMANPOUR: So Minister, let me ask you --

(CROSSTALK)

AMANPOUR: -- just the way that you're telling me that the account balance is going to work out, will those reforms that you are proposing now make up

for what your prime minister announced practically the day -- his first day in parliament to reverse privatizations, to increase the minimum wage, to

hire back public sector workers, I mean, this is a lot of money that you're still spending out.

VAROUFAKIS: Not really. If you look at each one of these proposals, the rehiring of public sector workers that were illegally dismissed, this

concerns 2,000 people. The previous government had already budgeted for 15,000 rehirings or hirings. So there is no fiscal -- net fiscal impact

there.

On the question of the minimum wage, we have agreed with our partners that we're going to phase this in in a way that does not affect the efficiency

of companies, of firms or have an impact on -- negative impact on economic recovery.

Every single pre-election campaign pledge that we have made will be incorporated in a way that is consistent with the -- this new, fresh

dialogue with our partners into this plan, this contract between Greece and Europe that will helpfully -- hopefully, I should say, allow Greece to turn

a page and to go back onto the road of recovery, because we haven't had recovery yet.

(CROSSTALK)

VAROUFAKIS: -- to the contrary.

AMANPOUR: Let me play you something that you told me just two weeks ago on this program when talking about bailouts. I want to know whether you think

Greece will need another bailout in a few months' time. But precisely because of this that you told me two weeks ago.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

VAROUFAKIS: . we were like drug addicts and we always cared about the next dose. The next dose was the next loan tranche. We don't want the next

dose. We don't care about the next loan tranche when our debt is unsustainable.

We want to get rid of the addiction.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: But I mean the deal you've just struck means that you will get more loans. So how does this square with what you told me two weeks ago?

VAROUFAKIS: I stand by every word that I said in this clip of yours, of mine. Remember, we had three Eurogroups in the last few weeks, during

which the Greek side, our side, was putting up a struggle to be heard about how to reform Greece and how to change the austerity modus vivendi in such

a way as to allow Greece to grow and to repay its debts without having to depend on these doses.

We could have ended this stalemate between us and our partners simply by signing on the dotted line of documents that were presented to me and

getting the next dose. We didn't do it because as I was saying in this clip, we want to get rid of the addiction. And the only way of getting rid

of the addiction is twofold. Firstly, we need to reform this country properly in a way that we have planned, not in a way that was imposed upon

us from outside. And secondly, we need to recalibrate austerity in such a way as to reduce this tendency to fuel the debt inflationary cycle so as to

be able to stand back up on our own two feet.

And this is what we're beginning to do. Now we haven't won this war yet, if you want, this campaign. This was a first step in the right direction.

I'm elated that we have taken but I'm subdued about the prospects of continuing; we need to be able to continue this dialogue with our partners

in a period of collegiality and seeking mutual benefits from it.

AMANPOUR: All right. Minister Yanis Varoufakis, thanks so much for joining me from Athens tonight.

And there may be some breathing room as we've said for Greece in the Eurozone to strategize for the future. After a break, a different kind of

strategy, campaign guru David Axelrod's inside story of helping President Obama win the White House. But can he propel the U.K. Labour leader, Ed

Miliband, to 10 Downing Street? The believer, after this.

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AMANPOUR: Welcome back to the program.

Some have dubbed my next guest the man who made Obama president, David Axelrod was campaign guru to the relatively unknown and untested candidate

who won the White House not once but twice and now he's turning his advice on the relative newcomer in the upcoming U.K. elections, Labour Party

leader Ed Miliband.

How did David Axelrod go from pounding the pavement as a beat reporter to the front row of history-making presidential politics? It's all in his new

memoir, "Believer: My 40 Years in Politics."

And he joins me now from the United States.

David Axelrod, welcome to the program.

DAVID AXELROD, OBAMA CAMPAIGN CHIEF STRATEGIST: Thank you. Good to be with you.

AMANPOUR: Good to be with you, too, and we mentioned that you were the man behind, "Yes, we can," which was very, very catchy at the time.

How did that go down when you presented it to your candidate?

How did you even come up with it?

AXELROD: Well, I came up with it -- this was from our -- it actually began in our 2004 campaign for the Senate in Illinois, Senator Obama was then a

state senator running for the state Senate -- for the United States senate -- and this was for his first ad in that campaign. We only had a few. But

"Yes, we can," was a slogan that I developed because I felt it captured the spirit of the campaign. It was about we and not him. It was about -- it

was optimistic at a time when people were very pessimistic and cynical. And it talked about what we could do together.

So I wrote it into a spot about all the improbable things he had done in his life and it finished with him saying, now it's -- now they say we can't

change Washington; I'm Barack Obama and I approved this message to say yes, we can.

We did one run-through; he got to the end of the ad and he said -- it kind of crinkled up his nose and said, yes, we can.

Is that too corny?

So my heart stopped because I loved it and I made a vigorous case for it. And he wasn't convinced. But luckily Michelle Obama was sitting on a

staircase in this home where we were shooting to watch him do his first ad, and he turned to her and he said, "Miche, what do you think?"

And she just slowly turned her head and said, "Not corny."

And he said, "OK, fine."

So he didn't much care what I had to say about it. But she convinced him that it was good to go. And it turned out to be kind of a iconic tagline,

not just for that campaign but for campaigns to come.

AMANPOUR: That's exactly right.

So the lady came through for you. That's pretty amazing. You must have breathed a huge sigh of relief.

Let's go back, though, to 2004 because you are a self-described optimist. You are the hope and change. You are the believer, as it says in the title

of your book.

And I want to go back to really where candidate -- or, well, Senator Obama at the time splashed onto the international stage at the convention for

John Kerry's endorsement. And he basically said the following:

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OBAMA: Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been just a collection of individuals or a collection of red states and blue

states, we are and always will be the United States of America.

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AMANPOUR: So this was this soaring belief that actually you could knit back the partisan politics, the divisions in the United States and actually

what we've seen and you write in your book and you admit it kind of got even worse.

Can I just quote what you've written about that?

"I deeply regret that we couldn't change the rancid politics of Washington. It's a bitter irony that the election of a president on a mandate for that

change touched off such a ferocious counter reaction that it wound up only exacerbating the problem."

It is incredible.

How? Why? Did you over believe? Were you too optimistic?

AXELROD: Well, we were -- we did believe that, given the crisis that we were facing in particular that we would find partners on the other side of

the aisle, to work with us to try and solve them. But they made a different calculation, Christiane. We had swept in large Democratic

majorities, you'll remember in 2008, and when we arrived in 2009, they made a calculation that, OK, fine. We've got a crisis; he's got big majorities.

Let him solve it. Let him take on all these very difficult problems and make decisions that are clearly getting be unpopular to try and deal with

the crisis which will be with us for a while, because that will enhance our ability to win in 2010 and force him to operate as a partisan more partisan

than he had promised to be.

I don't think it was an admirable strategy but it was a diabolically clever one and it fed on itself.

But let me just say this because I don't want to leave people with a sense of hopelessness. The whole point of trying to get people to work together

in Washington was to solve problems and move the country forward. And the fact is, we're in a much different place than we were in 2009 when this

president took office. And there were 180,000 troops in Iraq and Afghanistan when we had a health care system that completely out of

control. We had historic discrimination against gays and lesbians. We had a financial system that had no 21st century rubric. And on all of these

things and others, climate change, Cuba, immigration reform, we've seen historic progress. And that's the change ultimately that we were fighting

for, not just a change in the temperature in Washington, but a change in the direction of the country.

AMANPOUR: I want to ask you about a specific change, whether you agree or not, and that is obviously Barack Obama is the first black American

president. And yet so many people still talk about the vestige of racism in the United States. We've just seen the film, "Selma;" the president had

a showing at the White House. He talked to all the stars. It won one of the statues at the Oscars last night.

And yet you've got recently Rudolf Giuliani, the former mayor of New York and once a presidential candidate, you know, basically saying to a

political group I don't think the president loves this country. You had a politician actually tell this president you lie.

That's pretty unusual. Do you think it boils down to race, David?

AXELROD: Well, I wrote in the book that I never -- when you and others ask me this question in the past, I demurred because I didn't want to leave the

impression that all of the president's opposition was rooted in race because, after all, that's not the case. And I didn't want to make it

sound as if I was making an alibi for whatever political problems he had.

But it is an indisputable fact that no other president has had his citizenship and his Americanism challenged in the way this president has.

As you point out, no other president has had a member of the House of Representatives stand up during a presidential address and shout, "You

lie."

And yes, there's the part of this is race and the resistance on the part of some to -- the changes that have come to our country where more diverse

country barriers have fallen, Barack Obama represents that change. I celebrate it; I embrace it. But for others, it's an object of fear or

whatever, resentment. And it plays out in these ways.

AMANPOUR: Let's move over to this side of the Atlantic. There is an upcoming election in May as you know, because you are involved in advising

Ed Miliband, leader of the Labour Party. The "Financial Times," among many, many press, have asked is Ed ready? Because he's got dubious poll

ratings; people say he has a charisma gap. He is not Barack Obama.

You called Barack Obama a once-in-a-lifetime candidate.

Is Ed ready? Will he win?

AXELROD: Yes, well, let me say first of all, I wouldn't compare any other politician to Barack Obama, not David Cameron or anyone else. He's sui

generis, in my view because of his combination of skills and so on.

Yes, Ed can win and I think the polls reflect that he can win. And the reason he can win is that there's tremendous dissatisfaction with the Tory

government. And the reason I got involved, Christiane, is that I see similarities between the fights on both sides of the ocean over how

advanced economies deal with changes that have made it difficult for everyday people to get along to get ahead, to work hard and be rewarded for

it. It has made economic mobility more difficult, more -- and has exacerbated these great gaps in wealth and power. And I think that's a

great threat to both our countries. And I see this race as very much about that. The Tory policies only exacerbate those problems and conspire

against everyday people. They suspect that's true.

And Labour and Ed Miliband have answers to that. Ultimately I think that's what this election's going to be about. And in the short election that's

coming up, you're going to see him prosecute that case. And I'm not as concerned about polls of the moment and some of the political chatter.

Ultimately people are going to make a decision about which direction they want to take the country.

AMANPOUR: And really out of time, but I wanted to ask you because everybody's looking at the next American election.

Can Hillary Clinton win if she becomes the Democratic nominee?

What would a Jeb Bush mean for the Democratic candidate?

AXELROD: Well, he's be a tough candidate if he gets through his primaries and holds to his commitment on immigration reform, education reform,

whether he can get through that Republican Party that way is a big question.

Yes, she can win if she's the kind of candidate she was not in 2007, but 2008, connecting, revealing, not cautious but venturesome in terms of the

positions that she takes and if she addresses this issue that I just raised, which is how do we create an economy in the 21st century that works

for the broadest number of people?

I think that's where she's going to land. I suspect she's going to be a very strong candidate.

AMANPOUR: David Axelrod, your new book, "The Believer." Thank you very much indeed for joining me tonight.

AXELROD: Thanks so much.

AMANPOUR: And winning and losing from politics to Hollywood now, after last night's Oscars, we look at one of the nominated films, "The Imitation

Game." It didn't take home many statues, but is expected to bring hope and change. Imagine a world where a miscarriage of justice can haunt long

after you die. Pardon the innocent -- when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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AMANPOUR: And finally tonight, imagine a world where you can right the wrongs of the past aided in no small part by an Oscar nominated Hollywood

film. That is the world the family of the British war hero, Alan Turing, are trying to create.

Turing saved thousands of lives and turned the tide of World War II when he cracked the Nazi Enigma code only to face prosecution and later even

chemical castration because he was homosexual. This terrible treatment eventually drove him to suicide in 1954. His family did manage to win him

a pardon 50 years later and today they are marching on Downing Street, armed with a petition, demanding that the British government pardon all

49,000 men who were persecuted for their sexual orientation like Alan Turing was.

The actor, Benedict Cumberbatch, who played Turing in the film, "The Imitation Game," lent his star power to the half million signatures already

on the petition. He didn't take home the Oscar for the Best Actor, but the film did win a statuette for Best Adapted Screenplay. And as writer Graham

Moore took to the stage, he created one of the most memorable and frank moments of the evening.

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GRAHAM MOORE, SCREENWRITER: When I was 16 years old, I tried to kill myself because I felt weird and I felt different and I felt like I did not

belong. And now I'm standing here and so I would like for this moment to be for that kid out there who feels like she's weird or she's different or

she doesn't fit in anywhere. Yes, you do. I promise you do. You do. Stay weird. Stay different. And then when it's your turn, and you are

standing on this stage, please pass the same message to the next person (INAUDIBLE).

(APPLAUSE)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: An important message and as one of my guests tonight may have said, "Yes, you can."

That is it for our program tonight. Remember you can always see the whole show online at amanpour.com, and follow me on Facebook and Twitter. Thank

you for watching and goodbye from London.

END