Alexis Tsipras: 'We are the great hope for change'

Helena Smith in Athens The Guardian, Thursday 27 December 2012 17.10 GMT

Greece's young leftist firebrand held the future of his country in his hands for a few days in June. He may do again in 2013

Alexis Tsipras and his radical left Syriza party may have changes in tone but their main objective remains the same: ripping up Greece's bailout agreement. Photograph: Yorgos Karahalis/Reuters

He came from Greece's political wilderness – yet for a few days in June Alexis Tsipras held the future of the euro in his hands. Six months on, the fast-talking firebrand who took the world by storm in the run-up to the Greek elections may no longer be in the spotlight, but he has not faded into history. "We may have narrowly lost the battle," Tsipras says of the failure of his radical left Syriza party to clinch power. "But we have not lost the war."

As leader of the main opposition in the country on the frontline of Europe's debt drama, Tsipras is now ensconced in an elegant office on the ground floor of the Greek parliament, a former royal palace that looks on to Syntagma Square, the theatre for the robust rallies that have rocked Athens over the past three years.

Syntagma is likely to see more tumult in the months to come – next year is poised to be the roughest since Greece descended into economic freefall following revelations of the true scale of its budget deficit in late 2009.

"We are the great hope for change," the politician says, his arms sprawled across the back of an armchair. "And we don't want only to stop the catastrophe, the bad medicine," he adds, referring to the recession-inducing austerity cuts Greece has applied in return for rescue loans from its "troika" of creditors at the European Union, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund. "We also want to change Greece – all the positive structural reforms can only be done by us. The political environment was one of the main reasons for the crisis, as was a public sector created to bring in votes."

At 38, with the addition of a newborn son to his four-member family, the young politician has come a long way since the days when his disparate alliance of leftists, greens, Marxists and Maoists worked out of a couple of shabby rooms on the second floor of the parliament building – a reflection of the mere 4.5% that the party then polled.

Propelled by vehement anti-austerity rhetoric and uncompromising opposition to policies that have seen the disposable income of most Greeks drop precipitously, Syriza's fortunes have risen dramatically.

Greece's landmark June election was billed by Antonis Samaras, the man who went on to win the ballot, as a stark choice between painful reforms that would keep the country in the euro and opting, via Syriza, for a return to the drachma. Support for the leftists soared, with the party taking 29.6% of the vote.

Tsipras's own oratorical flair and charisma have undoubtedly contributed to the ascent. Public opinion surveys have repeatedly put his party in the lead since the summer. He has his sights on power. Demands for fresh elections are likely to be heard frequently over the course of 2013.

"This government does not have a long lifeline," he says, waving his arms for emphasis as he lists the measures adopted by his "dogmatic neo-liberal" political enemies that, he continues, have been tried and failed miserably.

"Greece is unique. Even after its debt was restructured it continued to go up," he says. Because the measures were self-defeating, he adds, they were doomed to exacerbate the country's economic death spiral. "A haircut is inevitable and it will happen after the German elections [next September]."

Critics contend that Tsipras is betting on disaster. He is, they say, a demagogue with merely a schoolboy knowledge of economics and the intricacies of global finance. For Samaras and his junior partners, power-sharing in an uneasy coalition, Syriza is not only irresponsible but dangerous to boot.

The party's embrace of the state and steadfast refusal to accept the privatisation of public utilities – with Tsipras often being compared to the late socialist strongman Andreas Papandreou – is, they argue, disastrous for a country dependent entirely on international creditors to keep replenishing its near-empty public coffers.

The former pony-tailed communist sticks to his guns: "The problem with the public sector is not one of quantity but quality," says Tsipras. "We are at a European average in terms of size."

This week as he made his first official trip to Latin America – meeting not only the president of Brazil, Dilma Rousseff, but her predecessor Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva – Syriza's foreign policy was similarly derided. But the party shot back, saying the visit was part of efforts to "internationalise the Greek debt problem" by pursuing a multifaceted foreign policy that is not only dependent on the EU.

Yet while Tsipras is clearly preparing for power, he is also putting water in his wine – and not only because the disaffection of the middle class is bound to grow with the implementation of austerity measures in 2013 that are billed as the toughest yet. Last month Syriza took the historic step of uniting as a single force, with an overwhelming 75% voting to create a central committee led by Tsipras and the party's decisively pro-European wing.

With maturity have come moderation and a self-confidence on the part of Tsipras that was previously lacking. The dress code, like the first grey flecks in his raven black hair, has changed. Jeans, increasingly, have been replaced by sharper suits, Italian shirts and suede shoes along with a striking improvement in spoken English for a politician who, unlike many in the Greek political establishment, did not attend private schools or universities abroad. "I watch CNN and read the Guardian now," Tsipras says.

But aides insist that while the party's tone may have changed – a by-product of being forced to grow up abruptly – its overarching objective remains the same: abolition of the memorandum outlining the terms of Athens's bailout and renegotiation of the loan agreement it has signed with its partners.

"From the first year of the crisis everything we have said has come true," says Tsipras. "Of course we feel vindicated but it's not enough. The whole policy has to change."

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