ATHENS: A decade after his notorious clash with Greece’s international creditors, former leftist prime minister Alexis Tsipras is back — with a new party in a political scene fragmenting under the weight of scandals and income malaise.
In a speech in Athens late Tuesday, the 51-year-old said he was returning after months on the sidelines “to restore trust where disappointment prevails today.”
Tsipras said his new party, Greek Left Alliance (ELAS), sought to “end the authoritarianism (and) corruption that are the hallmark of today’s government.”
Greece, he argued, “needs a shock of integrity and democracy,” after years of rule by conservative Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis.
Greece’s youngest prime minister in 150 years, Tsipras came to power in 2015 promising to eliminate austerity. He clashed with the European Union and International Monetary Fund, to which Greece owed money, almost crashing the country out of the euro.
The former radical communist ultimately backed down and signed a final rescue deal that enabled Greece to exit the crisis in 2018.
But the compromise split Tsipras’s Syriza party, which went on to lose successive elections to Mitsotakis’s conservative New Democracy party.
Tsipras stepped down as Syriza leader in 2023 after another defeat and resigned as a member of parliament in October.
- ‘Deterrent’ -
The former PM “will attempt to present himself as the deterrent capable of dislodging Mitsotakis,” Antonis Papargiris, research director of polling firm GPO, told AFP.
Papargiris said Tsipras’s goal is “to secure second place and the role of leader of the opposition, with his sights set on the national elections after 2030, when he will attempt to genuinely vie for power.”
There was immediate criticism of the new party’s name, as ELAS is both the acronym of Greece’s police and the name of the communist guerrilla force that fought the Nazis during World War II.
Tsipras’s new movement aims to rally social democrats, radical leftists and greens.
But several of Tsipras’s former supporters have been critical of his shift toward the political center.
“I think that Alexis Tsipras believes the story of the left is over for him,” his former finance minister Euclid Tsakalotos jibed to the Action24 broadcaster last week.
Opinion polls have shown that up to 18 percent of respondents could back a party headed by Tsipras, who is expected to poach several Syriza MPs and cadres, enough for second place.
- Scandals -
Mounting prices and a combination of scandals have eroded support for Mitsotakis’ government, now in its seventh year in power.
Chief among them are a farm subsidy scandal investigated by the EU and a wiretapping scandal in which cabinet members, journalists and the head of the opposition, socialist leader Nikos Androulakis, were targeted.
There is also widespread anger about the slow investigation into Greece’s worst train disaster, which took three years to get to a trial after claiming 57 lives in 2023.
Elections are scheduled for 2027, but there is speculation they could be held as early as September.
An Alco poll this month showed nearly 80 percent of Greeks believe laws are only “selectively” applied in the country, while nearly 50 percent said their vote would be influenced by rule of law issues.
Prime Minister Mitsotakis remains ahead in the polls.
But the political landscape has fragmented, with as many as three new political parties potentially emerging.
Besides Tsipras’s formation, former conservative prime minister Antonis Samaras, a long-time critic of Mitsotakis who was kicked out of New Democracy in 2024, is also strongly rumored to be planning a challenge.
And Maria Karystianou, who has soared to prominence by campaigning for the victims of the 2023 train tragedy, in which she lost her daughter, also announced a new party on May 21.
The new parties “seem to repeat old patterns of thinking,” Mitsotakis told his cabinet this week. He said there was an emerging “political Babel whose only common ground is the denunciation of the government.”
