The mistakes and missteps of the SYRIZA-ANEL <\/b>government are undermining Tsipras\u2019s narrative of credibility.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are three kinds of lies:<\/b> the ordinary, the destructive, and the statistical\u201d\u2014these words were spoken in the 1890s and have gone down in history, sometimes attributed to the British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli<\/b> and sometimes to Mark Twain<\/b>. And while their origin remains uncertain, it is certain that Alexis Tsipras<\/b> of the former SYRIZA<\/b> and now of the ELAS<\/b>, has more than lived up to all three categories of lies…. The crowning achievement was the blackboard she maintained from 2016-2017 at the Maximos Mansion to evaluate, as prime minister, the work of the government and its ministers and to prioritize their tasks. <\/b><\/p>\n
We never understood his conclusions back then. The final evaluations were published nearly 10 years later in the pages of \u201cIthaki.\u201d There, everyone except the author and grader was publicly judged and criticized<\/b>. But let\u2019s take things from the beginning, though in reverse chronological order. <\/p>\nFalsified statistics<\/b><\/h3>\n
In the wake of the announcement and presentation of the new political initiative, the polls… show the former prime minister holding steady in second place<\/b>, but this is likely not enough for him and his associates, who want to demonstrate\u2014and, above all, convince others\u2014that the Greek Left Alliance has greater momentum and… is also drawing votes away from New Democracy. <\/b>The numbers, however, tell a different story.<\/p>\n
Nearly two out of three voters for the new party are coming from SYRIZA, and only 2% (Alco) are coming from New Democracy. The actual numerical data isn\u2019t all that useful for his narrative… political upheaval and revolution that the strategists on Amalia Avenue are dreaming of in the heat of summer. This seems to suggest a hasty move within the Left\u2019s political complex, as well as a recycling of the same voters.<\/p>\n
The new venture presents itself as a vehicle for \u201cnew credibility,\u201d led by the very same political figure who made many… empty promises during the years of the SYRIZA-ANEL coalition government.<\/b> Back when he promised to tear up the memoranda and ended up signing the third and most onerous one. Back when he promised a referendum to overturn the memoranda and then turned it into an agreement. <\/p>\n
Tsipras now wants to enter the public political discourse as if this story began yesterday. He wants\u2026 to establish ELAS as the major alternative for power\u2014and not just a\u2026 carefully crafted rebranding of the same political product and the same political leader.<\/p>\n
The suggestion of\u2026 getting to know the new party seems utterly disingenuous\u2014no matter how you look at it. Alexis Tsipras was elected Athens city councilor<\/b> in 2006, president of the Coalition in 2008, and member of parliament in 2009. He has led the official opposition since 2012 and served as prime minister from 2015 to 2019. <\/p>\n
It would be difficult to argue that he is a \u201cnew\u201d or \u201cunblemished\u201d figure. He has been at the forefront of political life for about two decades, has served as party leader for 15 years, as prime minister for 4.5 years, and has been judged comprehensively, repeatedly, and over the long term by the voters.<\/p>\n
The voters remain virtually the same, as do the faces of the current political establishment. Even the arguments are increasingly reminiscent of those that drove SYRIZA from 36% to single-digit percentages.<\/p>\n
Tsipras\u2019s tenure, marked by lies and fake promises, has many memorable moments, especially during the coalition government and shortly before he took office\u2026 From \u201cGo back, Ms. Merkel, go back, ladies and gentlemen of Europe\u2019s conservative nomenklatura,\u201d we\u2019ve reached the point where he says of the then-Chancellor of Germany: \u201cShe is a politician who is aware of her responsibilities and\u2026 open-minded.\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n
In his critique of his early\u2026 talented political maneuvers, he declared emphatically: \u201cThere are others to do the somersaults and humiliating concessions.\u201d<\/b> Instead, in a speech he gave in Heraklion in late 2014, he promised: \u201c\u2026we\u2019ll beat the daouli and they (ed.: the markets) will dance… We\u2019ll play the lyre, and they\u2019ll dance the pentozali.\u201d<\/p>\n
And in July 2015, he took it to the extreme, contradicting himself yet again when he declared that \u201cthe only alternative and viable proposal is to abolish them with a single law and a single article\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
In an interview on the radio station Sto Kokkino, he stated: \u201cI didn\u2019t say that the memoranda can be torn up with a single law.\u201d\u00a0Or perhaps we should recall his contradictions regarding ENFIA<\/b>: \u201cIt is an absurd tax; it cannot be fixed\u2014it must be abolished,\u201d he declared in September 2014, and in a pre-election interview, he even claimed that he did not pay the property tax for symbolic reasons. In 2015, in a speech to Parliament, he called on citizens \u201cto support the national effort and pay the final installments of ENFIA.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2018We will defend the public nature of regional airports\u2019\u201d <\/b> were the words of Alexis Tsipras in January 2015, while in April 2017, when he met at the Maximos Mansion with Fraport\u2019s management\u2014to whom the 14 regional airports had been transferred\u2014he stated: \u201cYou are sending an important message with this investment of 1.234 billion euros; this is a significant moment for Greece.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the end, that blackboard at the Maximos Mansion took on a whole new dimension. It became the blacklist of the inconsistencies, mistakes, and misguided decisions of the SYRIZA-ANEL coalition government,<\/b> where among the first names listed is that of Alexis Tsipras, as well as so many others who have already packed their bags for Amalias. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The mistakes and missteps of the SYRIZA-ANEL coalition are undermining Tsipras\u2019s narrative of credibility.
\n\u201cThere are three kinds of lies: the usual ones, the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12081,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12080","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12080","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12080"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12080\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12081"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}