Protagonists of the crisis reveal behind-the-scenes, election excesses and secret contacts of Alexis Tsipras before the referendum of 2015 and the third amnesty.

At the centre of a period that determined the course of the country, the documentary “In the Millstone” unfolds unknown aspects, intense contradictions and critical decisions behind the closed doors of power, from the break of the crisis to the political upheaval of 2015. With key testimonies from key figures of the time, including Alexis Tsipras, Panagiotis Lafazanis and Euclid Tsakalotos, illuminating the election pledges, internal disagreements, and behind-the-scenes contacts with European actors that shaped the developments surrounding the memoranda, the economic stranglehold and the negotiations that brought the country “to the millimeter” before decisive decisions.

Unknown details and memories of the dramatic moments that the country experienced in the critical period from 2009, the accession to the memoranda in 2010, to the electoral victory of SYRIZA in 2015, includes the new SKAI documentary “In Chiliost” by Eleni Varvitsioti and Viktoria Dendrinou.

The climate before SYRIZA

The first episode of the documentary “Who swims naked?” focuses on the climate before SYRIZA’s election victory, campaign promises and the tightening vise.

Alexis Tsipras’ famous “Thessaloniki programme”, the promises made by Alexis Tsipras at the 2014 Thessaloniki International Fair, shortly before SYRIZA came to power, is revealing.

Lafazanis: Cheap populist slogan that we will abolish the memoranda with a law

“We thought it was bullshit, but the ears were happy,” Panos Lafazanis says, adding, “Any of these measures presupposed that the memoranda would be abolished. They didn’t come with paper and pen, he said there would be no problem with the Troika.”

As for Tsipras’s famous pre-election phrase about abolishing the memoranda with one law and one article, Lafazanis says: “To abolish the memoranda you need a review of all the laws of the country, this cannot be done with a law and an article, by pressing a button. I kept telling him: it’s a demagogic, populist, cheap slogan, and his answer was ‘well, that’s what the people want’.

Stathakis on… pedo on the markets: There is also the memory that we have to maintain

For Tsipras’s other famous line from Crete that “the markets will be dancing pentozali”, George Stathakis says with a smile: “It was a pleasant pun” to admit: “Real politics is done as it is done and the markets knew it and we knew it, in an election period there is also the anger we have to maintain…”

Tsakalotos: It was a mistake not to vote for a president and the Samaras-Venizelos government fell

Euclid Tsakalotos says openly that the decision to vote against the president of the republic proposed by Samaras-Venizelos was a mistake. “The most important thing was the decision not to vote for the president of the republic and to bring down the Samaras-Venizelos government. I still think it was a mistake and did not help subsequent economic policy,” he said.

For his part, Nikos Pappas argues that “political parties that want to be prominent should when the time comes do so.”

The unknown 2015 meeting between Tsipras and the German ambassador: He told Berlin that we would cooperate

Peter Soof, the German ambassador in Athens, reveals that he had a secret meeting with Alexis Tsipras in 2014 at Koumoudourou. “It was just the two of us, he was polite despite his public confrontational rhetoric. What I understood was his intention to convey to Berlin that there was no cause for concern and that Syriza and his government would cooperate.”

Jerun Dijsselbloem on Varoufakis: “It made it more difficult for him to say we were all crazy”

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