SYRIZA's only chance

Agora Contributor: Nick Malkoutzis

“We want people on the streets, we want you to protest,” SYRIZA leader Alexis Tsipras told the crowd at his last campaign speech in Athens on Thursday. He and his party envision that popular will can be the rising tide to lift SYRIZA in its battle with the troika and struggle to tame domestic opponents. The thinking goes that if the people are visibly on SYRIZA’s side its bargaining position will be impregnable.

This is the dream, at least. The nightmare is that people will be on the streets protesting because of the failure of a SYRIZA government to reach an agreement with Greece’s lenders, leading to the European Central Bank putting a stop to liquidity. It is a scenario in neither side’s interests but that does not mean it cannot happen.

This is why SYRIZA has only one chance – and very limited time - to get it right if it forms a government next week. If it starts negotiations with “European institutions” (it says it does not recognise the troika) by expecting that it will be able to win a political debate, its chance will vanish in an instant. While the decision about what to do with Greek debt, fiscal targets, reforms and liquidity is largely a political decision at the European level, political arguments from Greece cannot have a decisive impact on the debate. If a SYRIZA government bases its demands on the “humanitarian crisis” in Greece and the “fiscal waterboarding” its people have suffered, it will be shown the door and told to come back with a more convincing argument. Greece can only win over European decision makers by making it clear what it has to offer first.

While SYRIZA’s arguments regarding the importance of debt sustainability and the irrelevance of further supply side reforms in Greece’s current plight have merit, these are issues that can be settled over the medium- to long-term. The pressing financial constraints Greece is under mean that it needs the eurozone on its side in the short-term. Perhaps the only way that SYRIZA can secure this support is offering to be bolder on certain reforms than previous governments.

SYRIZA’s focus has to be on deep structural and institutional change. It needs to focus on the areas where the previous governments did little or nothing at all. If SYRIZA shows itself to be determined to overhaul Greece’s chaotic justice system, to improve the efficiency and accountability of the civil service, to make the tax collection system truly independent and ruthless, to increase political transparency, to investigate party and media funding and to tackle corruption in the dealings between the public and private sectors it will have a basis for discussion with Greece’s European partners.

As a newcomer to government, SYRIZA can argue that it is not the prisoner of vested interests in the ways that PASOK and New Democracy were. It can argue that it is able to venture into territory previous governments did not – such as the “triangle of sin” that economist and SYRIZA candidate Yanis Varoufakis spoke about recently - because they wanted to protect their friends, oligarchs (and others) that Alexis Tsipras spoke about to the New York Times.

Of course, to take on this daunting task SYRIZA needs a clear plan and unyielding political commitment to such a project. The fact that the idea of doing many of the things described above have only entered the party’s campaign language in the last few days suggest that neither of these two elements are in place. There is a suspicion that SYRIZA’s rise to power will simply usher in a new set of friends and cronies (some who retreated into the background in the last few years) and that Greece’s wheel of misfortune will simply keep on spinning.

Maybe there is still a narrow window of opportunity for SYRIZA to address this. If it is able to speak this language convincingly then perhaps the key eurozone players will be willing to listen. Ultimately, SYRIZA would need their support if it is going to embark on this project as the vested interests will not sit idly by while their kingdoms are brought to the ground. An agreement on these changes could form the basis of a conversation that could later include the debt relief and economic stimulus that SYRIZA has placed at the top of its agenda.

In fact, if SYRIZA really wants to seize the opportunity it has been given then the best service it can offer to Greece is to deal with the deep-rooted malaise in the public administration and political system. This will offer Greece a sounder platform for the future than a reduction in the public debt or a faster rate of growth. In fact, securing the last two without the first will only lead to Greece ending up in the same place it is now sooner or later.

If SYRIZA is serious about wanting to make history, it has to prove it straight away. It won’t have another chance.

Follow Nick: @NickMalkoutzis

26/01/2015 23:58
Posted by Dean Plassaras

Tsipras would prove to be a total idiot if he continued the Troika reforms. Those under the illusion that Greece should submit to further reforms better hit the books and fast.

In fact the Syriza promise is that you should forget about nonsense.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/26/opinion/paul-krugman-ending-greeces-nightmare.html

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