Interview: SYRIZA chief Alexis Tsipras....and will renegotiate Greece’s debt....

Interview: SYRIZA chief Alexis Tsipras

By Panagis Galiatsatos & Petros Papaconstantinou

The first obvious change at the offices of SYRIZA Coalition of the Radical Left party on Koumoundourou Square in central Athens is the heightened security. In the office of the party president on the seventh floor, Alexis Tsipras seems to be aware that the higher he climbs up the Greek political ladder the more pressure he will have to face.

Under a painting by Christos Carras depicting doves, the 38-year-old politician who suddenly found himself a serious contender for the post of prime minister following the fragmented elections of May 6, measures his words carefully and tempers his optimism ahead of a new round of general elections on June 17.

“We are not under the delusion that the people who voted for us are all ideologically sided with the left,” Tsipras told Sunday’s Kathimerni. “To a degree, our success is due to the succession of mistakes made by our opponents: They openly supported a memorandum that leads to catastrophe and then they led the country to new elections when they could have formed a government, hoping that the responsibility would be chalked up to us. And now we are being fought with the most old-fashioned means by the same spent people who brought Greece to the dire situation it finds itself in today.”

On his computer, he is looking at newspaper headlines featuring the latest gloomy assessments by the National Bank of Greece and warnings by foreign officials that Greece may be expelled from the eurozone.

“The threat to the future of the euro does not come from Greece and certainly not from SYRIZA,” Tsipras says. “Look at what is happening in Spain, look at the anxiety of Italy, at the increasingly prevalent belief that the eurozone cannot survive in its present form without major changes, which will lead us out of the deadlock of austerity. The problem is not restricted to Greece, but to Europe, therefore the solution must be European as well. This is our message.”
Reaching out

Following the May 6 elections, New Democracy made an overture to the broad center-right, while SYRIZA does not appear able to ensure such an overture. How could you form a government?

ND completed its about-face on the memorandum. From a pro- or anti-memorandum perspective, ND took the direction which its people disapproved, the direction of the memorandum. For the Popular Orthodox Rally (LAOS), which is also pro-memorandum, its overture to ND is interpreted more as an effort by certain officials to survive politically. Mrs. [Dora] Bakoyannis and Mr. [Antonis] Samaras have exchanged very strong barbs. But none of this matters when it comes down to protecting the memorandum and their personal survival. Not only have we reached out to increasingly broad sectors of society, but we have also announced collaborations that are not hinged on appointments.

Whichever party emerges on June 18 will have to manage an economy on the brink of collapse. You are aware of the huge deficits in state coffers following the report of the General Accounting Office. Why should the Greek people trust an inexperienced SYRIZA government with the management of such a critical problem?

It would be easy to reverse the question: How can we entrust public finances to the people who brought them to this state? But that is too easy and it was already answered in the first elections, which expressed the collapse of the two-party regime. Obviously much bigger steps need to be taken. We must, with realistic and decisive steps, break the vicious cycle of the crisis. We need to reboot the economy, to bring some relief to society and to introduce an alternative perspective. First and foremost this means scrapping the policies of the memorandum and the terms of the loan agreement [with the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund].

Have you decided who would lead the biggest ministries if you should form a government? Who would serve as finance minister, for example?

This is not the time to get into this. The important thing is that the right balance emerges on Sunday, June 17, that we see the preconditions for the formation of a government that will disengage the country from the memorandum and will renegotiate Greece’s debt. The rest will fall into place with time, with respect to the common sentiment and the judgment of the majority.

http://ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_wsite1_1_03/06/2012_445183