Tsipras Positions Himself As Premier Material

Greece’s major Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA) leader Alexis Tsipras’ rhetoric is a lot less bombastic these days in the wake of his party’s victory in Greece’s European Parliament elections. Tsipras, who built his party’s rise from a largely irrelevant, second-tier political group into a force in Greek politics, did it on the back of a relentless anti-austerity mantra, blaming international lenders, the government, speculators and capitalists for creating a crushing economic crisis that created record unemployment and deep poverty. It’s worked so far, but for Tsipras and SYRIZA to go any further, he’s been positioning himself as more open to business and working with investors and industry to create the growth he said is critical to the country’s recovery, and to overtake Prime Minister Antonis Samaras’ ruling New Democracy Conservatives in the next national elections. Tsipras is presenting a friendlier face to investors as he tries to cultivate an image as the leader of Greece’s next government, the news agency Bloomberg showed in a feature about his makeover. The old Tsipras railed against the financial establishment and the Troika of the European Union-International Monetary Fund-European Central Bank (EU-IMF-ECB) that put up 240 billion euros ($327 billion) in two bailouts but demanded, and got, big pay cuts, tax hikes, slashed pensions and worker firings in return. The new Tsipras is now talking about attracting capital to regenerate the economy, pledging to maintain a stable tax regime for companies and offering to cooperate with Europe’s traditional left-wing parties. That’s  a long ways from the days when he said he would renege on the loans, which prompted fears from his critics that he would take Greece crashing out of the Eurozone and bring down the whole financial bloc with him. But as his party rises, Tsipras is losing some of the fire-and-brimstone and sounding more conciliatory, looking for a broader base and understanding he can not get enough of the vote to rule outright, and needs to attract people who had been turned off by his burn-down-the-house approach to solving Greece’s crisis. “There is a gradual move to the center,” Aristides Hatzis, a professor of law and economics at the University of Athens, told Bloomberg. “Tsipras and the leadership of SYRIZA have realized this is the only way to achieve a majority at the polls. After the European elections, this strategy is clearly dominant.” SYRIZA has a long way to go to convince traditionalists and a mainstream audience it’s more than what it is: a motley collection of radicalists, anarchists, Stalinists, Trotskyites, Maoists, Communists, ecologists and verbal bomb tossers. Even with its present strength, SYRIZA doesn’t have enough support to control the 300-member Parliament if it wins national elections and, as Samaras did in linking up his party with the PASOK Socialists and Democratic Left (DIMAR) when he won to form a coalition, Tsipras would need political allies to govern. “We want to attract investors in Greece who will kick start an investment shock to restart the economy,” Tsipras said in a May 28 interview at his office in Athens. “There are two conditions for attracting those investors: to feel safe about the euro area and the prospects of the Greek economy and to see serious public investment.” Tsipras said he wants snap elections now. which Samaras said isn’t going to happen. Whenever it happens, even if it’s not until the government’s term runs out in 2016, Tsipras said he and a new SYRIZA will be ready. “It’s mainstream to be against these policies that are destroying societies in Europe today,” Tsipras said. “SYRIZA is a child of necessity, and of anger, and is a phenomenon that will last in the political life of the country because it has deep roots.”

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