AS GREEKS prepared to vote in this weekend’s elections, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble warned the country that any attempt to reject austerity would provoke EU vengeance.

If Athens ditches the “reform” programme imposed by the EU, IMF and European Central Bank (ECB) “troika,” he said, it will “not be allowed” to benefit from the massive QE stimulus announced a day earlier by ECB chief Mario Draghi.

Polls suggest that left populist party Syriza will win Sunday’s election — though it is unclear whether even with Greece’s 50-seat top-up for the party that comes first it will have a parliamentary majority.

Syriza’s leader Alexis Tsipras has attacked austerity as “fiscal waterboarding” and claims he will renegotiate the bailout conditions and the “memorandum” enforcing spending cuts and privatisations.

“Come Monday, there will be no memorandums, no troika,” he boasted today.

But eurozone finance ministers’ group president Jeroen Dijsselbloem said that if Greece remained in the euro — as Mr Tsipras insists it will — it has to “follow the rules.”

Syriza has moved to assure EU chiefs that its victory would not risk EU membership, the single currency or involvement in the US-led Nato military alliance.

Mr Tsipras has gradually softened his stance on the bailouts, from an initial pledge to “tear up” the agreements to a promise this week that a Syriza government would “honour its bailout commitments.”

By contrast, the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) is calling for the unilateral cancellation of Greece’s debt, withdrawal from the EU and Nato and extended public ownership.

“The day after the elections, whoever is in government, the EU and the ‘permanent memorandums’ will still be here and will continue to bleed the people,” it charged.

The party urged “every concerned young person, worker, pensioner — everyone who has not compromised with misery and defeatism to join forces” with it to ensure there was a powerful left opposition to whichever party wins.

“For the people to have real hope they need a powerful KKE,” general secretary Dimitris Koutsoumpas told a huge rally in Athens.