• Questions with Answers Tempe tragedy and wiretapping scandal mark elections in Greece
  • Direct Witness "Syriza is no longer a left party, it represents the interests of the rich"

With all the polls against him, Alexis Tsipras (Athens, 1974) remains confident that the polls will turn in his favor at the last moment and offer a "real show of victory", as happened in 2015. But at that time it was tied in the polls with New Democracy and Greece was a country on the edge due to austerity policies. Now, the conservatives lead by almost 7 points and the country is officially no longer the 'black sheep' of Europe.

Tsipras is the antithesis of Kyriakos Mitsotakis. Unlike the current 'premier', he has a long political career in which his greatest achievement has been and is to have relaunched the Greek left in the context of the crisis, occupying the traditional space of the socialists of PASOK in the Greek bipartisanship. Their trajectories are also very different; while Mitsotakis belongs to one of the majority political dynasties in Greece, received a select education and worked as a banker before becoming a politician, Tsipras comes from a middle-class family and his activism dates back to his high school days. As a student, he was active in the Communist Party of Greece (KKE), which split after the fall of the Soviet Union. He then joined the Coalition of the Radical Left (Syriza), an amalgam of currents formed by socialists, Maoists, ecologists and other families of the left. As a student, he also met his wife, 'Betty' Bazania, with whom he shares activism and has two children.

Tsipras debuted in 2006 as a candidate for mayor of Athens getting an unexpected 10% and since then his rise within the party was meteoric. A civil engineer by profession, his populist discourse against the Troika triggered Syriza in the 2012 elections, turning it into the second electoral force. His first major victory as party leader came in the 2014 European elections, where he beat New Democracy by four points. It was a prelude to what was to come in 2015, a shocking eight-point victory over the Conservatives in the general election, making him the youngest head of government in the country's history.

Greek voters saw in Tsipras a leader through whom to challenge the imposed policies that had left the country in utter misery. It mattered little then that he made a pact with the far-right Independent Greeks to form a government. As an atheist, he was the first head of government to swear an oath on the Constitution and not the Bible. He never wore a tie (he still doesn't) and kept riding a motorcycle around Athens. The Greeks were confident that Tsipras would bring them a 'revolution' that never really came.

The first measures of Tsipras as 'premier' were a clear challenge to the Eurozone: paralysis of privatizations, elimination of co-payment, universal health, emergency aid for the poorest Greeks, reinstatement of civil servants in their posts and extraordinary payment to minimum pensions. Then came the shutdown of the Greek banks, the closing of banks, the corralito, the chaos. The European Commission, the ECB, the IMF and conservative sectors were pushing for Greece to approve new bailout measures and Tsipras decided to launch a referendum for or against: 60% voted to end austerity. And there came the 'betrayal'. Unable to continue negotiating with the Troika, the government gives in and approves a new bailout, the third, with tougher measures than those voted in a referendum, including the resignation of Yanis Vaorufakis as Minister of Economy. "I know that fiscal measures will not benefit the Greek economy, but I am forced to accept them," he said then.

After only eight months of government, Tsipras resigns and calls new elections that he wins again. In this second term he had to bow to austerity and his measures led to a 48-hour general strike. The hard wing of the left was thrown on him, and there was a flight of militants. But not everything was economy during his four years in the Palace of Maximos: under his mandate, the country approves laws demanded by the LGTB collective, such as civil unions, sex change and adoption by homosexual couples.

In 2019, Greece turns to the right again with the victory of Mitsotakis by absolute majority, but Tsipras remains in the opposition with a strategy based on the attack on New Democracy for the scandal of government wiretapping and the tragedy of Tempe, which made him rise fleetingly in the polls in February. The centrist votes will be crucial in these elections and for this Tsipras presents himself with a more moderate discourse and in defense of the rule of law. He also tries to reach the vote of the 450,000 young people who vote for the first time: "The result of the elections as we speak is absolutely open. It depends on how many and who will vote. If young people voting for the first time go to the polls and cast a vote of punishment for Mitsotakis, then they won't have enough days to pack their bags."

On this occasion, he also has an opportunity: the change in the Greek electoral system that he himself promoted in 2016 and that is applied in these elections for the first time; the winning party will not get the traditional 50 extra seats to reach an absolute majority, as happened with Mitsotakis in 2019. In the case of second elections, a more than plausible scenario given the post-electoral chaos that is coming, the system, approved again by Parliament in 2020, is reintroduced. Tsipras has launched bridges to PASOK and advocates a grand coalition. But the left is divided and the rest of the minority parties refuse to become a partner of Syriza. Pending the results, Tsipras is already a survivor.

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