( CNN ) -- According to Christine Lagarde , managing director of the International Monetary Fund , it is payback time for Greece . Despite being forced to `` clarify '' her comments after a furious reaction from thousands of Greeks on Facebook , there will , she emphasized , be no softening of the demands the stricken country will have to meet if it is to receive further aid . But what if Greece simply ca n't manage payback ? As prescribed by the IMF itself , the normal remedy for a country that ca n't pay its debts would be devaluation and default . Locked in the eurozone , these options are not available . No one denies that the Greeks have very largely brought this disaster on their own heads . But , as anyone who has been there recently knows , they are now paying an excruciatingly heavy price for their past misdeeds . The public sector has seen its pay cut by an average of 40 % over the last year , and most pensions have been reduced . In what is left of the private sector things are even worse , especially for those who have lost their jobs in the downturn and the young , 50 % of whom are now unemployed . For them , when work can be found , the going rate is often half what it was before the crisis . Yet petrol , food and clothes all cost more than they do in Britain . Amazingly for Greece , even taxes are getting harder to evade . The property tax on many homes has trebled . Because it is levied via electricity bills , the only way to avoid it is to go without power . As the economy continues to shrink under the impact of austerity at home and recession abroad , it is little wonder that anxiety about the outcome of next month 's poll extends far beyond Greece itself . We read a lot about the thuggish extreme-right party , Golden Dawn . But it is the rise of the left-wing Syriza grouping and its charismatic young leader , Alexis Tsipras , that has really got the markets and the European Union establishment rattled . To them , Tsipras is dangerous because he has pledged to tear up his country 's controversial bailout pact with Brussels , despite saying he wants the country to stay within the euro . But he stands almost alone among leading European politicians in his ability to spell out two basic truths . Firstly , if the EU really wants to push Greece out of the euro , it should have prepared the way months , if not years ago , rather than leaving it to the last minute . Secondly , the sacrifices being demanded of Tsipras 's countrymen are financially and politically impossible . There is no longer any point in pretending otherwise . Last week , Europe 's assembled leaders once again told the Greeks that they should view the elections on June 17 as a referendum on whether or not they are going to stay in the euro . The not-very-subtle threat is that if they back Tsipras , they will be out on their ear . But , as the man himself frequently points out , if the new election is really to be treated as a referendum , the question wo n't just be whether Greece should stay in the euro . With the single currency in its present fragile state , it could very easily become whether the eurozone itself survives . Is this really something the rest of Europe wants Greece to decide ? And even if the Greeks vote the way Europe tells them to , what will have been achieved ? Everybody knows that the fundamentals wo n't have changed . The likelihood is that there will only be another crisis -- probably even bigger -- six months down the road . Seen in this light , Tsipras 's demand that the EU should instead help them to find a realistic way to stay in the single currency suddenly begins to make sense . After leading in the opinion polls at the start of the campaign , the latest surveys have Syriza slipping behind the right wing New Democracy for what looks set to be another tight finish . The pressure from abroad may be beginning to have an effect . But given the mess both Greece and the euro are in , the threat that Athens could yet call the eurozone 's bluff wo n't go away . That genie is now well and truly out of the bottle , whoever wins next month . This article is based on one that first appeared on theweek.co.uk , the website of Britain 's biggest selling current affairs magazine The Week . The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Richard Ehrman .
Richard Ehrman says anxiety about next month 's poll results extends beyond Athens . The rise of the left wing Europe grouping and its leader Tsipras has rattled the markets . But Tsipras says Richard Ehrman has been alone in spelling out the truth on the euro . Ehrman : If the election is treated as a referendum it could define whether the eurozone survives .