Syriza’s landslide victory sent a defiant message across Europe: that the majority of voters reject the core policy for dealing with the Eurozone crisis, as devised by Brussels and Berlin. Syriza’s victory could encourage other radical anti-austerity parties in southern Europe, including Spain’s Podemos, whose leader Pablo Iglesias told a rally: “Hope is coming, fear is fleeing. Syriza, Podemos, we will win.” The political dynamics have shifted. Dr. Binoy Kampmark has put this simply: “The left – and by this, the genuine, progressive, unmanagerial left – is getting noisy”.
In late December, a headline in Bloomberg Businessweek posed the question: “Is This the Dawn of the #Tsiglesias Era in the Euro Zone?”.
The fates of Syriza and Podemos are increasingly linked – not only by their own leaders but also by the European establishment. Both parties have surged into the lead in their respective countries on the basis of their rejection of years of austerity imposed by the troika – the European Commission, IMF and European Central Bank – and the ascendancy of the market over democratic accountability. Both parties have pledged to reclaim national sovereignty and democracy, and have called for a renegotiation of their national debts, the restoration of rights and benefits taken away during the economic crisis, a major jobs programs, and higher taxes on the rich.
Crucially, the return of a word that had been absence for a long time – hope – has dominated national discourses and national conversations. “Hope is coming,” Pablo Iglesias had declared at the final campaign rally of Alexis Tsipras’s Syriza party. In Greece, it is not just poor people that were looking for hope but also the aspirational middle class. The crisis has stripped lives down to the bone as the country has unraveled; almost a third of Greece’s population now lives below the poverty line. After five brutal years of austerity and recession, compounded by a corrupt oligarch, Greeks had lost faith in the political elite, and Syriza became a vessel of the discontent and the young.
YESTERDAY
TOMORROW?
Syriza’s victory is tantalising for many of the parties that see themselves on the fringe, maintains José Ignacio Torreblanca of the European Council on Foreign Relations. However, simply the ‘threat’ of being led to the euro exit door could prevent other countries from following Greece’s example. Furthermore, many in Spain were quick to challenge the extent to which Syriza’s victory would bolster Podemos’s chances of being elected. Barely a year old, Podemos, born from indignados citizen’s movement, is still in the process of defining itself, while Syriza has been represented in the Greek parliament since 2004.
What is evident is that there is electoral uncertainty in Europe, with the far left – and also the hard right – vying for power in Spain, France and the Netherlands. The clock is ticking for Syriza (now in coalition with the small, rightwing Independent Greeks Party) to strike a deal with creditors to keep Greece solvent and in the euro. Greece was small enough to be saved in the past, but Europe’s big problems lie elsewhere: in Spain, Italy and France, essentially to where the ‘real’ decisions will be made.
