SYRIZA Rising, Tsipras Wants Bailout Breaker

Despite securing $69 billion in a first series of new rescue loans to keep the country’s economy from collapsing, Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras’ New Democracy Conservatives and his coalition partners are falling further behind the major opposition party Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA) in new polls.
The survey showed that Greeks remain furious – if ambivalent – over more coming pay cuts, tax hikes and slashed pensions that are the conditions for aid from the Troika of the European Union-International Monetary Fund-European Central Bank (EU-IMF-ECB) although most want Greece to remain in the Eurozone.
SYRIZA leader Alexis Tsipras said he wants to free Greeks from the “yoke of the (EU-IMF) if his party takes power. Finance Minister Yiannis Stournaras said he feared that social unrest could undo the Troika deal and bring down the government, that also includes the tiny Democratic Left and the fast-fading PASOK Socialists.
The survey showed that SYRIZA is dominant in virtually all age and professional groups, bad news for Samaras’ hopes that the new loans would unify the country.
While in Argentina on a tour of Latin America, Tsipras issued a Christmas message in which he reaffirmed SYRIZA’s commitment to cancelling the terms of Greece’s bailout if the leftist party comes to power. He denied that he was visiting Brazil and Argentina to find an economic model for Greece to follow.
“It may seem strange to you but we feel like scientists in medieval times,” he said. “Of course, we are not saying that the earth rotates but something equally obvious: austerity is destructive. We are certain, though, that the enlightenment will defeat the medieval times and hope will defeat fear,” he added, the newspaper Kathimerini reported.
The opinion poll published by Metron Analysis earlier this month gave SYRIZA 22 percent of the vote and New Democracy 19.8 but a more detailed analysis published by Efimerida ton Syntakton on Dec. 24 indicated that the Leftists are dominant in most groups.
Support for SYRIZA is strongest in the 18-24 and 55-64 age groups, where it reaches 28.8 and 26.3 percent respectively. New Democracy’s main support is in the 65+ group, where backing for the conservatives runs at 35.5 percent.
SYRIZA is also the dominant force among civil servants, private sector workers and the unemployed, where support for the leftists reaches 22.6, 25.1 and 27.5 percent respectively. New Democracy is most popular among farmers, where its backing reaches 29 percent.
Following a 75-minute meeting with Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff last week Tsipras said Greece should see Brazil as an example of how to get out of its economic crisis and blasted  Samaras for not seeking allies outside of the Eurozone.
“Brazil’s message for the Greek people… is the exit from the crisis cannot happen through memorandums of austerity but only via policies of social cohesion, growth and redistribution,” Tsipras said.