The sudden rise to power of Alexis Tsipras as a radical left-wing firebrand was a searing moment for the entire EU, pushing Greece to the brink of exiting the euro zone.
Eight years on, the one-time political iconoclast faces a more mundane challenge: saving his Syriza party from the ignominy of being replaced as Greece’s main opposition party.
Tsipras, who steadily shifted toward the center during his tenure as prime minister from 2015-19, is now trying to salvage his career after Syriza’s vote share plummeted by more than 10 percent in the May 21 election. He admitted the result was “unexpected and painful”, especially for the opposition during a cost-of-living crunch.
With another election on June 25, Syriza’s main center-left rival is now looking to consolidate its advantage. The establishment party Pasok, which dominated Greek politics before the financial crisis, will try to overtake Tsipras and restore its preeminence in the Greek parliament after boosting its vote share by 3 percent in recent elections.
Tsipras’ relevance battle reflects broader changes in Greek politics as Europe’s financial bad boys repair their economy to return to being one of the euro zone’s fastest-growing countries. Greek voters appear keen to move on — and to abandon the politicians who embody the rebellious spirit of the bailout years.
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To add insult to injury for Tsipras, the ruling New Democrats won more votes than they did four years ago, in what appeared to be a break with the norm in Greek politics. The result reassured Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis that if he called new elections within a month, he would secure a majority government.
Perhaps the only consolation: The party led by Tsipras’ estranged political partner Yannis Varoufakis, who took over Germany’s former finance minister during the crisis, had an even dismal election result and fell short of the 3 % Threshold Greek Parliament. After his brief ministerial stint, Varoufakis left Syriza and formed his own party, MeRA25, whose latest campaign was to introduce a figure named “Dimitra” after the ancient Greek goddess of agriculture. payment system. Voters don’t believe it.
The party of former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis failed to enter parliament © Sypros Bakalis/AFP/Getty Images
Analysts blamed Syriza’s poor performance directly on Tsipras’ court, citing his failure to adjust his rhetoric to Greece’s new realities.
Tsipras “failed to convince his own voters with no real policy proposals,” said Stella Lardi, an associate professor at Queen Mary University of London.
By contrast, the NDP’s message is positive, emphasizing that it will create stability and move the country forward, said Wolfango Piccoli, co-president of political risk at consulting firm Teneo. He added that Mitsotakis “senses a public desire to end this toxic era of debt crisis politics”.
“Syriza is a product of a crisis and has not come out of it,” said Stathis Kalyvas, professor of government at Oxford University’s Gladstone.
During the campaign, Syriza invoked polarizing rhetoric of the decade-long economic collapse, claiming that small and medium-sized companies were “flooded in debt” and that “young men and women saw their dreams shattered” as hundreds of thousands of families faced repossessions.
But the message sounds hollow. “Greece has gone beyond that,” Karivas said.
Mitsotakis’ government, by contrast, has been embroiled in a string of scandals of its own, including the wiretapping of Pan-Greek leader Nikos Andrew Lakis, but it has managed to shrug off charges and stay afloat. The new election will be held under a different electoral law that could give the prime minister’s party up to 50 extra parliamentary seats, enough for him to govern alone.
“People are noticing the sense of crisis management that is lacking in times of economic crisis and are voting for those who promise more predictability in their lives,” Kalyvas said.
Although Tsipras said he was personally responsible for the poor election result, he has pledged to stay in office for now. “We are responsible to the citizens who did not vote for us,” he told the first party meeting after the election.
But some say his job will be hard to keep if Syriza’s votes fall further.
“Syriza is very close to Tsipras,” Kalyvas said, because he was the one who led the party from obscurity to power. “At the same time, he’s seen as a political loser. For politics, that’s fatal.”