Tsipras/Syriza pull it out

Posted on September 20, 2015 by | 7 Comments

tsipras
With only 30% of the vote yet to be counted:

zoi

‘Popular Unity: Not Popular Enough to Take a Seat in Greek Parliament’, greekreporter.com
My.stars.
This entry was posted in geopolitical matters, realpolitik, and tagged . Bookmark the permalink.

7 responses to “Tsipras/Syriza pull it out”

  1. juliania2 | September 21, 2015 at 9:08 am | Reply

    Thanks, wendye! This is going to be interesting, with some European elections following fast on the heels of it. Lowest turnout ever, and the polling places looked almost empty during the day. Popular Unity numbers do confound – but Greeks know best on character and viability – all politics being local in a small place. The numbers who stayed away from the polls, even with a mandatory electoral law would indicate that if TINA why bother.

    At least the Troika folk seem alarmed that the same coalition has quickly developed, and a strong leader charismatically speaking may indeed be what is needed – at least the Guardian is still calling him ‘left’. Speaking of which, there is a good critique of same by Jonathan Cook at counterpunch this morning – a quote:

    ” . . . The talkback sections in the Guardian show its kneejerk belittling of Corbyn has inserted a dangerous seed of doubt in the minds of a proportion of its formerly loyal readers. Many of those hundreds of thousands of leftists who joined the Labour party either to get Corbyn elected or to demonstrate their support afterwards are Guardian readers or potential readers. And the Guardian and Observer ridiculed them and their choice.

    Belatedly the two papers are starting to sense their core readership feels betrayed. . .”

    I saw that Podemus’ leader sent warm congratulations to Tsipras – also interesting! He has a chance now to redeem himself in the eyes of a lot of very disappointed Greeks; I sure hope he tries.

    • wendyedavis | September 21, 2015 at 10:00 am | Reply

      yes; that’s pablo iglesias in the third tweet from the bottom.

      corbyn as head of labor, scottish and catalonian independence de facto votes soon, worker strikes in finland, i dunno what all. anti-war protests against shinzo abe…i may bring a small war and peace report soon, with the aid of david swanson and others.

  2. LeMoyne Castle | September 21, 2015 at 12:53 pm | Reply

    Can’t let it go unsaid any longer…
    Tsipras == Obama
    The Greeks have a new member of the corporate austerian duopoly: SYRIZA. One of the wings of the corporate party must be seen to complain about the dominion of the banksters, hence, SYRIZA. Of course the obvious fact that none of them will do anything about the permanent depression and fire sale in Greece leaves voter turnout in the dirt.
    Many more Greeks voted against the memoranum than voted for Syriza. Recognizing the thin ice, Tsipras was smart to call elections now before Popular Unity could gain enough traction to enter Parliament. The revolution will not be televised, indeed.
    I think the talk of a four year mandate may be premature – I don’t think the turd memorandum lasts that long. Certainly the corporate press is much more pleased with Syriza now that they have knuckled under and express objection or talk of ‘hope for change’ only in empty rhetoric.
    Pope Francis is right – the worship of money prevents real change.
    My favorite line of Revelations – the one that woke me up and has me struggle to get up on my feet:

    For they shall fall on their knees and worship The Troika: The Whore Riding The Beast saying: “Who is like unto The Beast? Who can stand against him?”

    Can’t really get down on them to hard… they need money to eat, have a home, keep the lights on, etc. amirite?
    On the other hand: Syriza has had a salutary Occupy-like effect on the conversation about the Euro across the EU and beyond.
    On the gripping hand: When I see Tsipras, I hear/think/feel Obama.

    • wendyedavis | September 21, 2015 at 3:21 pm | Reply

      yes, tripras showed what the trioka was all about, and i agree that the press, the DOW, the creditors, are all giddy with not only the Syriza win, but that they’ve formed a government with New democracy.

      most of the tweets from the EU bigwigs were about: getting to work to implement the programs, with this likely future looming. not gonna be much wiggle room for negotiations.

      all of it baffled me, including that so many peeved with tsipras seemed to have voted for new democracy, and golden dawn’s shares went UP! if the government fails, will they get even more seats?

      yanis is trying to put a positive spin on it, at least at the end of the piece:

      ‘The lenders are the real winners in Greece – Alexis Tsipras has been set up to fail’

      “In rare moments of inexplicable optimism I like to imagine that kindness to strangers in trouble may be the harbinger of a renewed Greek government campaign against the troika’s dystopian vision of Europe.”

      tsipras = obama. please say more about that, so that i don’t mistake what your meaning may be.

      one mandate that seemed to have guided tsipras in the first place was that the greek people wanted to stay in the EU; in this new mandate he clearly notes that the wind of the party advising a grexit…lost. gawd knows yves smith broke her neck trying to show what an impossible situation that would entail.

  3. Comrade X | September 21, 2015 at 6:12 pm | Reply

    >the MPs do not shy from calling [Zoe Konstantopoulou, the former] President of the Greek Parliament a “sexually frustrated orang-utan” or appeal to her husband who is a captain in the merchant navy “to quickly come ashore and calm her down”. The President of the Greek Parliament branded a newspaper headline in the parliamentary chamber, that called for her husband to “shut her up”.

    the Tsipras Government’s General Secretariat for gender equality, created to protect all women who are victims of sexist aggression, […] remained totally unmoved by the sexist lynching that the President of the Greek Parliament has been subjected to. This negative impression becomes worse when one considers that the victim is a highly visible public figure, a leader of the Syriza party of which the Prime Minister and the General Secretary are also members. This silence is surprising, and edifying, when we learn that the same General Secretary, who is so silent about the sexist attacks on the President of the Greek Parliament, rushed into action to condemn a daily newspaper that made sexist attacks on the Romanian Delia Velculescu, who is the current chief representative of the ’Troika’ that is imposing its dictatorship on Greece.

    So goes the degeneration of the irredeemable Syrizan occupation.

    Assuming that [Popular Unity] intercepted discontented Syriza voters, they captured slightly less than half of the voters who abandoned Syriza.

    […]

    Popular Unity, which started its campaign with very strong messages about Grexit, gradually diluted their position as the campaign unfolded. I think another factor that played against them was having been in government just until few weeks before. Those who have not forgotten the betrayals of two mandates (the January election and the July referendum), would have struggled to trust Popular Unity’s promises. Tactically, their dangerous engagement with nationalist rhetoric (including a rather cold and ambivalent position on refugees) might have failed to achieve much in electoral consensus, with Tsipras ‘moderate’ patriotism being a better rehearsed script for left-oriented audiences, and the xenophobic nationalism of Golden Dawn sending clear, if disturbing, messages about the need to cater to “Greeks only”.

    Hmm. Does “nationalist rhetoric” refer to their call for Grexit? “For them, the return to the drachma is a question of ideology,” Varoufakis said of Popular Unity.

    The only significant difference from Syriza’s previous programme is the call for the introduction of a national currency. Popular Unity explicitly calls for a Greek exit from the euro. “The introduction of a national currency as the basis for a progressive, forward-looking programme of rebuilding is not only a functioning possibility, it is the possibility of hope” to develop the country, the programme states.

    But was this hope unattractive because Greeks are so disheartened that they have little faith in their self-rescue? Or was the following apparent?

    Popular Unity’s program is now actively directed towards dividing workers in Europe and playing them off against each other. Huge wage cuts are to be used to obtain a competitive advantage against other countries and to enrich the Greek bourgeoisie and sections of the middle class.

    [The] capitalist perspective of export-oriented national economic development has nothing to do with “progress,” never mind “hope.” It is deeply anti-working class and reactionary. Essentially it translates into nothing more than the transformation of the country into a low-wage paradise for global investment.

    When Popular Unity writes in its program that its policies will not be combined with wage cutting, this is a barefaced lie. In fact, exports would rise because labour costs, particularly for international companies, would be slashed with a cheap currency. By contrast, workers would be largely cut off from imported products, which in Greece include many medications. Does false hope win elections?

    Of course it does. Under crapitalism, proles are offered a Smörgåsbord of false hopes.

    The destiny of abandoned proles is sclerotic capture-bondage by crapitalist sadists.

  4. Comrade X | September 21, 2015 at 6:38 pm | Reply

    Unemployed proles mostly evenly divided between “left” and right:
    Exit polls of unemployed –
    SYRIZA , Golden Dawn 14%
    KKE, ANEL, 13%

    Poor tortured proles.

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