The rise and the resignation

When Alexis Tsipras took over SYRIZA in 2008 – thanks mainly to Alekos Alavanos – the Synaspismos party had shed the permanent angst of the progressive left about whether it would make the 3% cut to enter Parliament, even though the rate of 5% in the 2007 elections was not very promising, not to mention the drop to 4.6% in 2009. 

On Thursday, Tsipras stepped down. It was the right thing to do, for him and for his party, which saw its popularity nosedive even further in last Sunday’s election. There was a time when 18% would have been regarded as an excellent performance, if not a miracle, by the party, but after three wins (in the 2014 European election and the national ballots in January and September 2015) and the first-ever leftist-led government, it is nothing to be pleased about.

In a parallel universe, SYRIZA would have won the January 2015 election with one point above 36.3%, which would have given it a majority in Parliament so Tsipras would not have had to look for a government partner and invent the “good chemistry” with Panos Kammenos from the Independent Greeks after prematurely ruling out a coalition with the centrist Potami.

In a parallel universe, SYRIZA would have won the January 2015 election with one point above 36.3%, which would have given it a majority in Parliament

What would the absence of this nationalist, conspiracy-driven crutch have meant for the country? We will never know. What we do know is that leftist voters felt crushed and ideologically slighted from day one, a disappointment that was compounded by the volte-face over the referendum, when SYRIZA’s one-man leadership realized with excruciating tardiness that the memorandums could not simply be torn up.

Disgruntled SYRIZA supporters from the progressive left hold the party, and its leader in particular, accountable for a lot of things. But there were two moves that cost him very dearly: the Prespes agreement and changing the voting system to simple proportional representation (how could he not, though, when it was always the party’s position?). The name deal with Skopje was seen as treason not just by the nationalist populists, but also by ersatz leftist groups like Course of Freedom. Not to mention New Democracy, of course, which preached toxic rhetoric from the soapbox and has even come to term SYRIZA as an “exception,” adopting the vernacular of civil division.