Tsipras Eases Up a Bit, Wants to Talk With EU Leaders

ATHENS – Accused of being the man who could push Greece out of the Eurozone and into chaos and collapse, Coalition of the Radical Left leader Alexis Tsipras, a front-runner in the June 17 elections, is trying to persuade European leaders he’s not so radical after all and doesn’t want Greece to leave the economic bloc, even though he wants changes to the austerity measures that have crippled the country. He’s on a tour of European capitals with a simple message: Let’s Talk.
In an interview with Reuters, he was occasionally feisty, but also stressed repeatedly that he wants negotiations to keep Greece in the euro. He said he was looking to forge ties with like-minded European figures, including new French President Francois Hollande, who want to soften austerity policies by finding new ways to encourage growth.
“The first reason we are taking this trip is because we want the governments of these important European Union countries, France and Germany, to see what we stand for: what is being transmitted in Europe about us is not what we represent and want,” Tsipras told Reuters at the office of his SYRIZA party. “We are not at all an anti-European force. We are fighting to save social cohesion in Europe. We are maybe the most pro-European force in Europe, because its dominant powers will lead the union into instability and the euro zone to collapse if they insist on austerity,” he said.
While he repeated his assertion that the terms of a second bailout deal with the European Union-International Monetary Fund-European Central Bank (EU-IMF-ECB) Troika, this one for $173 billion, was too harsh, he said that if he comes to power he will seek a new policy mix to keep Greece in the euro. “Yes, we do want Europe’s support and funding, but we don’t want the money of European taxpayers to be wasted. Two bailouts in a row went into the dustbin, into a bottomless barrel. If this continues, we would need a third package in six months. Europeans and their leaders must realize this,” he said. Greece is surviving on a first series of $132 billion in rescue loans, but the accompanied pay cuts, tax hikes, and slashed pensions have killed the economy and impoverished many.
“We want to make use of Europe’s solidarity and funding to create the basis for our long-term reforms. But we need to know that in two-three years we’ll have escaped this downward vortex, we will have growth, and we’ll be able to pay back the money they gave us. There is no way we could pay them off if we continued this program.”
There are fears that if Tsipras and anti-austerity parties win that they could redo the deals or even renege on them and push Greece into complete collapse and even bring down the Eurozone and rattle world markets. He is a former Communist Youth leader and civil engineer with no background in economics, but using an anti-austerity platform pushed his party into second place into May 6 elections that failed to give any party enough of the vote to form a government.
Two days later he wrote a letter to European leaders declaring the bailout program “delegitimized,” by the people of Greece, horrifying the leaders of the once-ruling New Democracy Conservatives and their otherwise bitter rival PASOK Socialists who had formed a coalition in support of austerity but were repudiated at the polls, winning only a combined 32 percent. Polls show Tsipras and New Democracy leader Antonis Samaras neck-and-neck. The Troika has warned that any attempt to tinker with reforms could lead the money pipeline being cut off.
Tsipras said that new negotiations for a Greek rescue should take place among elected leaders, rather than at the level of technical advisors from the Troika, which he said was “degrading” for a Greek prime minister. “For the first time after a very long time, we have the conditions and the terms so that this negotiation is in the interest of the people and against banks and capital.” Among measures he said he wanted to discuss would be funding from the ECB for state budgets – a proposal seen as anathema in Germany – and joint European bonds to fund a “Marshall plan” of investment in sectors like renewable energy.
“Greece is a blessed country. It has a lot of sun, it can manage its waters in a better way to produce energy, it has wind. It should become a renewable energy Eldorado,” he said.  “If we prescribe a medicine that worsens the patient’s health instead of curing the illness, the solution can’t be to give him another dose, as we did with the second bailout. If the Europeans don’t realize this we will have made a historic mistake, because the real patient is not only Greece….We must realize that we must change the treatment before it is too late for Europe.”