Greece's Tsipras moves into the mainstream

Alexis Tsipras, leader of Greece's leftist Syriza party, recently traveled to Frankfurt and Rome to meet European leaders.

He is softening his confrontational tone with Greece's international lenders. He has drafted an agenda for the first 100 days of a future government.

In these and other ways, the 40-year-old former student activist is acting like a prime minister-in-waiting.

Syriza, once a fringe leftist movement, is now the most popular party in Greece, representing the many voters who feel punished by the country's EU/IMF bailout.

In May, the party easily won European elections and gained the governor's seat in Greece's most populous region. Today, it polls higher than any other party, leading by a margin of between four and 11 percentage points over Prime Minister Antonis Samaras's conservatives. One poll shows Tsipras as the most popular political leader in the country.

Tsipras, on Monday, called on party leaders to set a date for an early election, arguing polls must be held before the government signs any binding deals with EU/IMF lenders.

Greece's government is under growing pressure ahead of a presidential vote in February, which could trigger a snap election and bring Tsipras's party to power.

Greece's next election is scheduled for summer 2016, but a snap poll would be called if Samaras fails to get his nominee for president elected, something for which he currently does not have sufficient support.

"The big change has begun. The old is on its way out. The new is coming," Tsipras thundered in a recent speech to parliament. "No one can stop it."

The key to Syriza's ascent, party officials say privately, is a calculated effort to moderate the rhetoric that prompted German magazine Der Spiegel to name Tsipras among the most dangerous men in Europe in 2012.

The party still rails against austerity measures and a bailout-driven "humanitarian crisis". It wants to reverse minimum wage cuts, freeze state layoffs and halt state asset sales.

Support for euro

But Syriza no longer threatens to tear up the bailout agreement or default on debt. Instead, officials say it supports the euro and wants to renegotiate the bailout by using the same pro-growth arguments of partners France and Italy.

Syriza's transformation mirrors the political progression of other anti-establishment fringe parties, such as the Northern League in Italy, that changed tactics after gaining parliamentary power and became more mainstream political forces.

It also reflects how Greece has turned a page on the dark days of the eurozone crisis four years ago, when Athens' profligate spending risked bringing down the entire euro project. Then, a Tsipras victory at the polls was widely seen as a trigger for a bank run and Greece's exit from the euro.

Recently, however, Tsipras has held talks with European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi in Frankfurt and Austrian President Heinz Fischer.

Under Greek law, parliament must be dissolved and fresh elections called if it fails to elect a president. Syriza officials privately say they have already begun talking to small parties about a future alliance.

Fears of snap elections and the prospect of a Syriza-led government have spooked investors and helped send Greek 10-year bond yields briefly past an unsustainable level of 9 percent last month. Syriza officials say they are not worried.

Syriza still has some radical voices, such as parliamentary spokesman Panagiotis Lafazanis who has vowed to "cancel" the bailout the way it was voted in, that is, by parliament overnight. But more broadly, Syriza's rhetoric began to change noticeably after the party won European elections this year.

Dimitris Papadimoulis, a senior Syriza official and a vice-president of the European Parliament, said: "The climate in 2014 is very different from that in 2012. More and more people realize that Syriza is a leftist European political force fighting for change in Greece and in Europe and does not want the eurozone to collapse.

(China Daily 11/05/2014 page12)