Broken promises and austerity make Greece embrace the past
The firebrand politics of Alexis Tsipras appear to have fizzled out as Greeks go to the polls today
They were the upstart rebels; the firebrand crusaders against cuts and austerity; borne to power on a wave of anger and desperation. But four years on, Greece’s prime minister Alexis Tsipras and his ruling Syriza party face defeat at today’s general election, paving the way for the return of a political dynasty.
Exhausted by austerity and broken promises, the Greeks are expected to elect Kyriakos Mitsotakis, scion of a powerful political family, as premier.
Far-Left Syriza trails behind the conservative New Democracy party, mortally wounded by the austerity it had to implement. It came to power with vows to defy Brussels and its creditors and renegotiate the bail-out. Its slogan was “hope is coming” but within months of taking power, it had defied the results of a referendum and stuck with the multi-billion pound bail-out by the much resented “troika” – the European Commission, the IMF and the European Central Bank.
Greeks were then dealt grinding tax hikes, pension cuts and job losses.
“Syriza lied to us. I’ll be voting for New Democracy,” said Michael Vasilakopoulos, 41, an Athens lawyer. “We have high tax and social security payments. I earn €55,000, which on paper is a lot, but after tax and social security, I’m left with €20,000.”
Angelos Chryssogelos, of Chatham House, the think tank in London, said: “The main problem for Syriza was they ended up doing precisely the opposite of what they were elected on. Over the last four years they became associated with harsh economic measures.”
Panos Skourletis, secretary general of Syriza and a former minister, admits: “We were called to implement a policy that was not ours but the result of a painful compromise with creditors.
“The margin in which we had to manoeuvre was very limited and we
had few options. The [bail-out deal] was a straitjacket. We had to choose this difficult path or go for a conflict that would have led to absolute bankruptcy and further poverty. We took the least painful way.”
But Syriza says it did put Greece on the road to recovery. Unemployment fell from 28 per cent in 2013 to 18 this year. Youth unemployment dropped to 40 per cent – still woefully high.
There have been tax cuts and now Greece can borrow on international markets, having exited its €288billion bail-out programme last August.
“For the first time since 2010, we are not talking about whether Greece will leave the euro zone but rather about growth,” said Mr Skourletis. For many Greeks it was too little too late, and Syriza performed poorly at the European Parliament elections in May, prompting the prime minister to call an early general election, which should see victory tonight for the pro-EU New Democracy.
As premier, Mr Mitsotakis, 51, a graduate of Harvard, promises to kick-start the economy by cutting taxes, luring foreign investment and privatising state assets. He wants to renegotiate tight fiscal rules imposed by Greece’s creditors, which stipulate that Athens must achieve a primary surplus of 3.5 per cent of GDP.
“Taxation is too high. If it stays this high, nothing can happen in the economy. Some people pay 80-85 per cent of their income in taxes,” said Theodoros Roussopoulos, a former minister of state for New Democracy.
Cutting taxes will help lure back Greek businesses that moved to places with better tax regimes, he added.
The old Athens airport, abandoned for years, is an asset ripe for selling off as a multi-million pound housing, shop and office development.
But pledges easy to make in opposition will be harder to enact in power, say analysts. Daphne Halikiopoulou, a professor of politics at Reading university, says: “There is little room for manoeuvre for New Democracy … where are they going to get the money? It’s just not there.”
Critics also point out the party is part of the old political establishment that brought about Greece’s economic crisis in the first place, along with Pasok, the Left-wing party with which it alternated in power for decades.
“It is quite astonishing how easily people forget,” said Ms Halikiopoulou.
Victory will herald the return of one Greek political dynasty: Mr Mitsotakis is the son of former prime minister Konstantinos Mitsotakis, who died two years ago. His sister, Dora Bakoyannis, is a former minister and was mayor of Athens – a post now held by her son, Costas Bakoyannis. Greece has a predilection for these Kennedy-like dynasties, with the Karamanlis and Papandreou families also providing prime ministers in the past.
“Syriza was a creation of the crisis,” said Prof Chryssogelos. “Greeks will be electing something old but there is also a sense it is new, that the crisis is coming to an end. People need to feel things are functioning again.”
‘Greeks will be electing something old but there is a sense it is new, that the crisis is coming to an end’