The Greek Parliament approved an austerity bill demanded by the country's international creditors in return for a new bailout.
The bill was passed with 229 votes in favour despite the split within the left-wing ruling party Syriza, BBC News reported. Sixty-four members of parliament, including 32 SYRIZA MPs, voted against reform measures. Several prominent members of the ruling party voted against it, including former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis.
The highly controversial austerity bill, presented by Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, passed with the support of pro-European opposition parties.
Addressing parliament before the vote, the prime minister said that his government was forced to implement austerity measures.
"We don't believe in it, but we are forced to adopt it," Tsipras said ahead of the vote early Thursday, according to DW.
"The Greek people are fully conscious and can understand the difference between those who fight in an unfair battle and those who just hand in their weapons," Tsipras told parliament.
"We had a very specific choice: A deal we largely disagreed with, or a chaotic default," he added, according to Al Jazeera.
Clashes broke out at an anti-bill demonstration outside the parliament, and more than 50 protestors were detained during hour-long clashes.
Several days before the vote, Tsipras' Syriza party slammed the agreement between Greece and its creditors for new bailout package.
"On July 12 a coup was carried out in Brussels that proved that the aim of the European leadership was the exemplary annihilation of a people who envisaged that another path could be followed beyond the neoliberal model of extreme austerity," a party statement said, according to the Associated Press. "A coup that goes directly against any kind of notion of democracy and popular sovereignty."
