Former Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tspiras announced on Thursday his resignation as leader of Syriza after the painful electoral defeat suffered by the leftist party in the last elections this Sunday. Syriza reached only 17.8% of the votes and 48 seats, an even lower percentage than the one it achieved in the May elections (20%), which was already considered a debacle for that Greek radical left that had managed to unseat the Social Democrats. of Pasok and become an inspiration for other European forces such as Podemos or Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s Unsubmissive France.
The resignation of Tsipras began to plan after the result in May, when Syriza, which according to the polls could exceed 30% of the votes and dispute the governance to the right of Kiriakos Mitsotakis, ended up losing eleven points compared to the 31.5% obtained in 2019. But then, all the analysts ruled out an immediate resignation, since the most probable prospect – as has ended up happening – was an electoral repetition before which there was no time to find a new candidate.
“The time has come to start a new cycle,” Tsipras said today in a televised message, assuring that a reform of the party is necessary and advancing a process to elect a new leadership, in which he will not be a candidate. “The negative result it can –and should- become the beginning of this new cycle”, he insisted.
And he has assessed: “This complicated path has had commitments, and difficult decisions, and wounds and regrets, but it has been a path that has left a mark in history.”
The clear victory of Mitstotakis, who with his economic message has led New Democracy to exceed 40% of the vote and obtain an absolute majority, has shown the limits of Syriza, which, as was seen in May, has continued to lose voters moderates who have returned to the coffers of Pasok.
Tsipras stormed to power in 2015, at the height of Greece’s deep debt crisis, with an anti-austerity message that resonated with voters outraged by the cuts. But during this time, one of Syriza’s problems is that it has not been able to penetrate with an important political machine inside the territory, since many union representatives or local politicians were still militant social democrats. Now, another headache for Syriza is that Tsipras’s leadership was so strong that there are no other immediate names known to replace him.
Mitsotakis won the elections chesting off the good economic results achieved during his tenure, as Greek growth is about to exceed the euro zone average and foreign investment has increased. The debt has dropped 35 points in the last two years. However, the left has not been able to take advantage of the various scandals that have shaken his figure, beginning with the wiretapping of politicians and journalists by secret services after Mitsotakis placed them directly under his control when he came to power. Nor has it benefited from the criticism of some organizations against the authorities for the rescue during the shipwreck, a few weeks ago, of a fishing boat off the coast of the Peloponnese in which up to 750 migrants were traveling, and of which only a hundred people survived. Tsipras expressed doubts about the performance of the Greek coast guard, but had no effect on the electorate.
