Reversions are brought to Alexis Tsipras‘s journey of political purification to… Ithaca by the documentary “In the Millionth” about the bleak days of 2015, when the country faced the monster of bankruptcy, which premiered Monday night on Skai.
It consists of six episodes and is based on the book “The Last Bluff” by Eleni Varvitsioti and Victoria Dendrinou, who were in Brussels as correspondents in 2015. Tsipras refused to participate He did not want to speak because he “read” bias and malice. What could he say, after all? His own story is anchored in “Ithaca” and any other attempt to recount the facts is Siren. And Tsipras is covering his ears and eyes – lest he… go astray.
The first episode of the documentary is set in early 2015, when SYRIZA and ANEL took over the country’s government. Nikos Pappas, Dimitris Tzanakopoulos, Euclid Tsakalotos, Panagiotis Lafazanis and Giorgos Stathakis tell how the social current was “built” for a… progressive government. It was when Alexis Tsipras was talking about the repeal of the memoranda “with a law and an article”. “Demagogic, populist and cheap slogan”, argues Panagiotis Lafazanis, while characterizing the Thessaloniki programme as “airs and graces”. He was also telling the then prime minister himself, he claims, to get the answer: “Hey, that’s what the people want”.
As for Alexis Tsipras’ characteristic pre-election phrase that “the markets will be dancing pentozali”, then Economy Minister George Stathakis treats it… with tea and sympathy as “a pleasant pun”. For Euclid Tsakalotos, the decision “not to have SYRIZA vote for the PM and to bring down the Samaras-Venizelos government” was a mistake, since it did not, as a result, facilitate subsequent economic policy.
In the EU’s clutches
Europe is taking a wait-and-see attitude about the SYRIZA-Annel government’s real intentions. “We were expecting a new approach from a government that was more serious about fighting corruption,” says Claus Regling, managing director of the European Financial Stability Fund from 2012 to 2022.
Giannis Varoufakis has been electrifying negotiations with European partners from the start. “He was less known in the world of econometrics than he led us to believe,” Thomas Wieser says of the former finance minister. “There was a new finance minister who said we were all crazy and that the approach, in recent years, was wrong,” says Gerun Dijsselbloem.
Varoufakis’ first contact with his European counterparts and his joint appearance with Dijsselbloem in Athens have certainly been memorable.After Yanis Varoufakis’… dalliance with Yerun Dijsselbloem in front of the cameras, when the then finance minister called the Troika a flimsy committee with which the government does not intend to cooperate, Yannis Stournaras – as he revealed – contacted the then prime minister. And Alexis Tsipras hung his minister on the pegs. “He said such a thing. What can we do now?”, he reportedly said. Stournaras hands him the phone number of Mario Draghi, and Tsipras doesn’t delay. He calls Draghi and assures him that what the then finance minister said is not true.
Following Yannis Stournaras, Peter Soof,the then German ambassador in Athens, comes along to reveal that he saw in secret Tsipras in 2014 at Koumoudourou: “It was just the two of us, he was polite despite his public confrontational rhetoric.What I perceived was his intention to signal to Berlin that there was no cause for concern and that Syriza and his government would cooperate.” It is curious why Tsipras was disturbed by the documentary’s facts and accounts and even before it was shown, he was talking – based on rumours and leaks – about “distortion of facts” and “character assassination”.
Critical point, the claim, according to what Tsipras had learned before the documentary was shown, that his administration had traded no pension cuts for the Prespes Agreement.We didn’t see that. Perhaps it will be… in the coming days. But the common thread, at least of what was aired, was what Stavros Theodorakis, chairman of Potami at the time, who had an active role in critical political developments, pointed out. “I was hoping that Tsipras was looking for a proposal to avoid making a mess of things with the Europeans.” And that’s what Tsipras did, but the annoyance probably has another cause. The documentary demolishes any trace of the sincerity of the… uncompromising Tsipras. And that’s why the phone call to Draghi and the meeting with the ambassador didn’t… fit into “Ithaca”.
Georgiades on Tsipras: “The biggest political fraud”
Andonis Georgiadis is launching a firestorm against Alexis Tsipras, Adonis Georgiadis, in response to what was said in the documentary “In the Millimeter”. In a post on X, the health minister called the former prime minister “a terrible liar”and claimed that he is “by far the biggest political impostor in the country’s recent history”. In 2014, Adonis Georgiades revealed in Greece’s 2014 report that in the same moment that he was telling the world “go back madame Merkel”, “we will abolish the Memoranda with one law and one article”, and “we will beat the drums and the markets will dance”, at the same moment he asked for and secretly saw the ambassador in his office and told him… “He told Berlin that we will cooperate”, Adonis Georgiades writes.
