He may have named his youngest son Ernesto and until recently held a Che Guevara’s poster on his office wall, but Alexis Tsipras is not willing to fan fires of the revolution, argues Newsweek Polska. He is not a “blinded ideologist but a formidable strategist who loves political games”, adds the weekly, stressing that the new Greek leader skillfully filled the political void created by the collapse of the long lasting two-party system in Greece. As Greek historian and sociologist Iannis Carras explains – His main asset is the fact that many Greeks see him as a politician who stood up to defend his country. Which is why Tsipras will continue to use patriotic and nationalist rhetoric currently shared by the Greek left and the rightwing parties. But he won’t be able to meet “unrealistic promises made during election campaign” even if he started dismantling some of the reforms of his predecessor by suspending the privatisation process of the Piraeus terminal and DEI energy supplier as well as by raising the minimum salary and planning to reemploy some of the public sector workers who had been fired. However, experts calculate the cost of Tsipras’ promises at 10bn dollars which Greece simply doesn’t have. Which is why, argues Gazeta Wyborcza, the new Greek Finance Minister, Yanis Varoufakis, has come up with a four-point recovery plan which is crucial to the government survival. It entails linking the interest on government debt to GDP growth, continuation of reforms but with “laser not butcher’s knife”, boosting investment by the European Investment Bank not only in Greece but across Europe and finally creating a new social assistance programme in the euro zone. Key elements of the plan depend on consent of EU partners and Brussels which is why Tsipras and Varoufakis are tirelessly travelling across the continent seeking support and looking for allies. When asked what if EU leaders and the Commission reject his proposals, Varoufakis recently admitted that in that case “death would be better”. Small wonder Tsipras has toned down his revolutionary rhetoric ahead of the final showdown with the German chancellor. But Newsweek Polska stresses that Angela Merkel currently seems less willing to compromise compared to 2012 when she feared that the collapse of Greece would result in the break-up of the euro zone – At present German chancellor is more inclined to accept a theory of the weakest link – getting rid of the burden of the weakest member would help the euro zone. The negotiations between Athens and Berlin will be extremely difficult. One of the German journalists have put it bluntly: “Mrs. Merkel finished off all her internal and external enemies starting with Helmut Kohl. She’ll have Tsipras for breakfast.”
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