My dear friends, good day to you!
In politics, it matters not only whom you fight. Equally important is whom you choose as your opponent.
Alexis Tsipras was absolutely clear in his interview yesterday on SKAI. The dilemma he wants to be posed in the elections is “either us or no one.” According to his own argumentation, only ELAS can defeat Kyriakos Mitsotakis, because it is closer to ND in the polls, has governing experience, and can constitute an alternative proposal for power.
The message is of course addressed to ND. But it also has a second, perhaps more important, recipient: PASOK. Mr. Tsipras did not stop at stating that he is ahead in the polls. He reminded that Nikos Androulakis had three years at his disposal to increase his party’s percentages and, as he said, “the needle was stuck.”
In other words, he is attempting to change the question that the opposition voter will answer. Not which party expresses him more, but which can claim power from ND.
Something that, between the lines, seems to serve the government itself as well, since while it is trying to deconstruct Alexis Tsipras, it is objectively contributing to his emergence as its main opponent.
The reaction of the government spokesperson yesterday was immediate and frontal. Pavlos Marinakis brought back the costing of ELAS’s announcements, the “money trees,” the changes to the Penal Code of 2019 and, of course, the political past of the former prime minister, contrasting the old “us or them” with today’s “us or no one.”
A reasonable government strategy. An opponent who has governed offers a specific past for evaluation, unlike an opponent who has not been tested in power.
But the coin has another side as well. Every time the government chooses Tsipras as its main target, it reinforces precisely the argument he needs: that the real contest is being fought between Mitsotakis and Tsipras. That the others may be registering strength, but the battle for power concerns two.
Thus a peculiar “convenient” enemy is created. Convenient for the government, because it can contrast with the present his governing past of 2015-2019 and remind that it has repeatedly defeated Alexis Tsipras at the ballot box. Convenient also for A. Tsipras, because the government attack offers him what he needs most: recognition as the opposing pole.
The greatest political cost of this mutual targeting does not necessarily concern one of the two. It may concern those who risk being left outside the bipolar framework. In other words, PASOK.
There is, however, one more phrase by Alexis Tsipras that deserves more attention. His reference to the second elections and his assessment that they “will provide the solution.” Because here he meets, from the opposite direction, the government narrative.
ND projects self-reliance as the answer to the risk of political instability. Tsipras states that he will first attempt the formation of a government with the progressive forces, but he is already preparing the next step as well: a second contest in which the dilemmas will be, as he himself said, “harsh.”
Therefore, behind the daily clash over high prices, fuel, the billions and the costing, something bigger is taking shape.
Mitsotakis and Tsipras are trying, each on his own behalf, to define the dilemma of the final ballot. The “convenient” enemy of one becomes the necessary opponent of the other. With the first ballot measuring the forces and the second, if there is one, providing the solution.