Δείτε εδώ την ειδική έκδοση

Syriza euphoria after win that shakes Europe

Hours before Alexis Tsipras claimed victory for his radical left Syriza party in Sunday's snap general election, the street party was already getting under way.

Thousands of mostly young Greeks gathered outside Syriza's electoral pavilion in central Klathmonos Square flanked by multicoloured banners proclaiming "Hope is on the way", as a live band played songs by Mikis Theodorakis, the leftwing composer whose music still symbolises resistance to the 1970s military dictatorship.

The Syriza leader told a cheering crowd after incumbent prime minister Antonis Samars had conceded defeat: "Greece is turning a page, it's leaving behind five years of humiliation and misery … We are putting together a government of social deliverance to carry out our programme and negotiate with Europe."

Yet for many in his audience, Syriza's election victory, the first by one of Europe's so-called protest parties, held out a promise of changes extending beyond Greece.

"It's a historic moment for all of southern Europe, the Greek left coming to power," said Pavlos Markopoulos, a website designer who brought his seven-year-old son Ilias to participate in the victory celebration.

"Greece has a chance to become be a truly progressive country and maybe others like Spain will soon follow our example," he added, referring to the rise of the leftwing Spanish party Podemos which will contest its first national election this year.

For Fevronia Sotiriou, a 29-year-old unemployed museum conservator, Syriza's arrival in power means "a change in social policy and help for people without privileges, who've really suffered in this recession".

However, despite the euphoria of election night, the hopes of Syriza voters that a Tsipras administration will be able to implement long-awaited social and political changes may prove shortlived.

It was still unclear on Sunday night whether Syriza would even achieve an overall parliamentary majority, despite its win over the centre-right New Democracy party of Mr Samaras.

An interior ministry spokesman said Syriza's final tally of seats in the 300-member parliament, which includes a 50-seat bonus as the front-running party, would range between 148 and 151, an outcome that would leave Mr Tsipras hostage to his party's far-left faction, the Left Platform, as he struggles to maintain government stability.

The knife-edge election result will give a boost to the Left Platform, a diverse group ranging from Maoists to anarchist sympathisers, which has been critical of Mr Tsipras's efforts during the election campaign to move Syriza towards the centre and may veto any attempt to make concessions to Greece's international creditors.

The far-leftwingers may also oppose an attempt by Mr Tsipras to bolster stability by teaming up with one of several small political parties that are each expected to win between 10 and 20 seats.

One candidate would be the rightwing Independent Greeks party (Anel), which bucked predictions that it would fail to win the 3 per cent of the nationwide vote required to enter parliament, capturing almost 5 per cent of the vote and 13 seats.

Anel co-operated with Syriza in opposition, blocking the election by parliament of a new president last month, a move that triggered the snap general election. It is also committed to ending austerity, overturning the current bailout agreement and restructuring the country's debt. But the Left Platform would be reluctant to form an alliance with a rightwing party, even one that has backed Syriza's economic policies.

Mr Tsipras reiterated on Sunday that his party would counter the EU and International Monetary Fund's bailout conditions "by making our own proposals for radical changes, including a four-year programme of fiscal policy and a debt restructuring plan".

"In the eyes of many Greeks, Syriza is now a pragmatic leftwing party which wants to keep Greece firmly inside the eurozone and whose principal objective - large-scale debt relief - makes perfect sense," said Nicholas Spiro of Spiro Sovereign Strategy.

Yet to many in Klathmonos Square it is Syriza's €2bn ambitious package of social spending, which includes providing free electricity and meals for several hundred thousand impoverished households and free medical care for the uninsured, that matters most.

Mr Tsipras has pledged gradually to restore the minimum wage to the pre-crisis level and rehire more than 10,000 civil servants made redundant as part of a sweeping overhaul of the public administration.

"We have finally put behind us the vicious cycle of fear and austerity," he said.

© The Financial Times Limited 2015. All rights reserved.
FT and Financial Times are trademarks of the Financial Times Ltd.
Not to be redistributed, copied or modified in any way.
Euro2day.gr is solely responsible for providing this translation and the Financial Times Limited does not accept any liability for the accuracy or quality of the translation

ΣΧΟΛΙΑ ΧΡΗΣΤΩΝ

blog comments powered by Disqus
v