Mohamed El-Erian, chairman of US President Barack Obama’s Global Development Council, wrote an article on Bloomberg View titled “Greece’s Firebrand Finance Minsiter Deserves to be heard” that shows support for Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis.

“I have never met or spoken to Yanis Varoufakis, Greece’s finance minister. Yet I feel I have gotten to know him through his writing and interviews, and by reading about his interactions with both the official and private sectors in Europe,” he writes before expressing his disappointment upon hearing that Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras sidelined Varoufakis from Greece’s complicated negotiations with EU and IMF creditors.

El-Erian describes Varoufakis as a “breath of fresh air in this protracted and exhausting Greek economic drama, which involves alarming human costs in terms of unemployment, poverty and lost opportunities.”

The personal style shown by the Greek negotiator “understandably proved unpalatable to his European partners” writes El-Erian who points to the bulk of Varoufakis’ career in academia. It was this experience in academia that led him to making the mistake of opening public discussion and discourse. His interest in “candid debates” rather than “diplomatic niceties” and “flowery introductions gave way to a laser-like focus on areas of disagreements.

El-Erian points on how he spoke to other finance ministers as an equal and was impatient due to his interest in quickly doing away with people’s suffering after so many years of “unguided policies.”