Alexis Tsipras is not a politician who was simply judged. He is a politician who was judged severely, repeatedly and over time by society itself.
Political memory in Greece is short. And some people are investing in just that. In amnesia, in confusion, in the need for an easy narrative that will wash away the past and baptize failure… a new beginning.
A prime minister who promised everything –“tearing up memoranda with one law”, abolishing austerity, restoring injustice – and ended up implementing the exact opposite. By signing, by laws, by policies that mostly burdened those he claimed he would protect.
The retirees don’t forget. Citizens who have seen incomes shrink do not forget. The EHIC that disappeared, the cuts that were dubbed “necessary”, the banks that were finally closed – not as a threat to “lenders” but as a reality for society – all these are not narratives. They are lived experiences.
And yet, the same politician returns today looking almost redemptive. As if he hadn’t ruled. As if he had not been tested. As if he had not been judged. As if he did not resign, taking responsibility – however belatedly – for a course that has confirmed nothing of what he promised.
There is, of course, an irony: his resignation was then presented as an act of political responsibility. Today, his reappearance seems to cancel even that. For if there was indeed a sincere self-criticism, if failure was indeed acknowledged, then what political capital does he return with? With what credibility does he again claim a leadership role?
Politics is not a theatre of role-reversal. It is not a cycle where the protagonist leaves, only to return as a “saviour”. It is a field of responsibility and consistency. And when you have identified with promises that have been so resoundingly broken, the return is not self-evident – it is a challenge.
Especially when it is accompanied by the narrative of “unity of the progressive party”. Because unity is not built on silences. It is not built on oblivion. And it certainly isn’t built on individuals who carry such a heavy political legacy, no matter how much they attempt to reframe it.
The Novartis scandal, the toxic political climate of that period, was not just an episode. It was part of an overall way of doing politics: conflict, polarisation, making enemies. And that is not erased by a new rhetoric of “synthesis.”
The question, then, is not whether a politician is entitled to return. The question is whether society is convinced that he has changed. And more importantly whether it can trust again someone who has been tested at the pinnacle of power and failed to live up to his own commitments.
Because at the end of the day, politics is not judged by intentions or words. It is judged by the footprint. And Tsipras’s footprint is not the one he describes today.
It is what the citizens have experienced. And that is not being rewritten.
.
