Fragiskos Koutedakis, who is one of the people involved in Alexis Tsipras’s team and is shaping the new party’s economic program, recently made some very interesting revelations about the 2015 period and the related negotiations for the third memorandum.

The revelations he made show not only how unprepared the Syriza government and Alexis Tsipras himself were for negotiations with Europe, not only that the former prime minister forgot his commitments very quickly, but they verify what is revealed in the documentary “In Chilionstvo”. That is, although Alexis Tsipras‘s side is running a whole campaign to deconstruct the revelations in the documentary, one of his advisers, who was then involved in the negotiations as secretary general of the GLC, verifies what foreign and Greek officials revealed in the SKAI series.

Frakiskos Koutentakis spoke about the Syriazas period of government a few days ago at a conference of the ENA Institute, headed by Giannis Dragasakis. There he said a lot of interesting things that show that we are one step closer to bankruptcy and exit from Europe by a government that literally didn’t know what it was doing.

There was confusion in the government

First of all, the former secretary of the GHC during the Syriza period revealed that there was a huge confusion in the Tsipras government about what exactly we were discussing with the Europeans and which measures they were positive and which they were not. In short, Alexis Tsipras forgot about the Thessaloniki programs and the memorandum abrogations too early and was discussing new measures with the Troika.

And all this in utter confusion. As he said among other things “There was confusion on our side, what is our proposal, where we say yes and where we say no.”

He commented that in the first half of the year, that is, when the third memorandum was agreed, there was no common line between the government officials and there was a general confusion with the negotiations. In fact, he said that this improved after the second elections in 2023, after the third memorandum had been passed, but he also commented that there were still cases where the line was ambiguous towards Europe, as each minister said his own thing.

That is, one of the people involved in forming the former prime minister’s new party described Alexis Tsipras’s government as a circus.

There was naivety

He also admitted at the conference that there was a naivety on the part of the then Syriza – ANEL government officials, as they thought they could convince Europe of their proposals without difficulty. Which was obviously an illusion.

And he stressed that the delays in negotiations by Giannis Varoufakis had ultimately hurt the country as the money ran out and described the situation as dire.

As he said among other things “There was a naivety. There was a naivety in the sense that if we discuss the thing and because… okay, we are educated people, we are intelligent people, we know letters, we were not anything haphazard anyway, if we tell them things in arguments and properly, they will understand. And we will convince them that “you can’t do what you say”. And, okay, a solution will be found. But that’s not how it was. It wasn’t that they were evil, evil people or that they had some evil intentions or some conspiracies and so on. It was a debate of arguments. It wasn’t an academic debate. It was “we put up the money and you do what we tell you to do.” Simple stuff. And, mind you, there wasn’t much room to say “I’ll do it” or “I won’t do it” because the money was running out. Okay, we made various patents (ed. meaning the commitment of reserves), but I don’t want to talk about that, but the situation was dramatic and scary. It wasn’t that you could say I’m going to buy time, there were various views from the government, you know, to delay it. Delay what? I mean delay what? It’s not in our interest to delay. We are losing 5-0.”

So they brought division in society, they promised memorandum abolition and a whole bunch of benefits, they destroyed the economy, they brought capital control, they closed the banks, we were on the brink of leaving Europe, they were shouting Go Back Merkel to agree like a third memorandum. And all of this is not revealed by an official who wants Alexis Tsipras “evil”, as the former PM’s side says for “In Chilionstvo”, but by the head of the GHC under Tsipras and his current advisor on economic matters.

Government is one thing, opposition is another

At another point, Frakiskos Koutedakis claimed that this has all been a lesson for Syrrizas and the Left, because as the opposition they consider mobilizations, promises and demands as politics. When in fact, he said, politics is the exercise of power in practice and governing is very different from opposition.

He even took a swipe at Syriza and Alexis Tsipras for not understanding the weight of responsibility and being unprepared to implement what he said. He also spoke about the populism of the opposition and the Left that promises everything to everyone.

As he said of Syrizas and the Left, among other things, “You can say and write whatever you want in programs and declarations as the opposition. Whatever you want you can say. There is no restriction. What we want we say and write. But when you get into the process of implementing them, that’s when you start to understand, which of course you should have understood before, that some things don’t get done and some things do get done.”

The entire workshop can be found in the video below:

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