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Even the ruling party of President Nicos Anastasiades, who negotiated the agreement four days ago, declined to support it, leaving the country with few options to avert a financial sector meltdown. The rejection was centred on the most controversial aspect of the deal—a tax on individual bank deposits—and came even after officials tried to calm objections by exempting depositors with less than €20,000.
Meanwhile, a government delegation led by the finance minister headed to Moscow to present a long-shot plan to ask Moscow for billions of dollars in return for stakes in the island's troubled banks and its energy assets.
The eurozone would continue to wait for a counterproposal from Nicosia, outlining how it would raise the €5.8 billion it needs in order to secure the €10 billion bailout it had agreed upon with the eurozone and the International Monetary Fund.
The government had revised the original terms of the deal before submitting it to the vote. The revised plan would have spared depositors with less than €20,000 in their bank accounts from the deposit levy. Depositors with between €20,000 and €100,000 would pay a 6.75 per cent rate, while those with more than €100,000 would pay 9.9 per cent. The revised plan, if it had passed Parliament, also meant that Cyprus would have fallen €300 million short of its revenue target of €5.8 billion.