Reuters/Athens
Greek left-wing leader Alexis Tsipras was sworn in yesterday as the prime minister of a new hardline, anti-bailout government determined to face down international lenders and end nearly five years of tough economic measures.
The decisive victory by Tsipras’ Syriza in Sunday’s snap election reignites fears of new financial troubles in the country that set off the regional crisis in 2009.
It is also the first time a member of the 19-nation eurozone will be led by parties rejecting German-backed austerity.
Tsipras’ success is likely to empower Europe’s fringe parties, including other anti-austerity movements across the region’s economically-depressed south.
The trouncing of the conservatives represents a defeat of Europe’s middle-ground political guard, which has dallied on a growth-versus-budget discipline debate for five years while voters suffered.
Sporting his trademark no-tie look, the 40-year-old former student Communist Tsipras became the first prime minister in Greek history to be sworn in without the traditional oath on a Bible and blessing of basil and water from the Greek Archbishop.
At a brief secular ceremony where he pledged to uphold the constitution, Tsipras told President Karolos Papoulias: “We have an uphill road ahead.”
In a symbolic move, Tsipras’s first action as prime minister was to commemorate Greek resistance fighters with red roses at a memorial in Athens to those who were executed by Nazis.
Defying predictions that he would turn from populist to pragmatist after taking power, Tsipras quickly sealed a coalition deal with the small Independent Greeks party which also opposes Greece’s EU/IMF aid programme.
Syriza won 149 seats in the 300-seat parliament with its campaign of “Hope is coming!”, leaving it just two seats short of an outright majority and in need of a coalition partner.
The Independent Greeks, at odds with Syriza on many social issues like illegal immigration, won 13 seats.
The alliance is an unusual one.
The parties, at the opposite end of the political spectrum, share only a mutual hatred of the €240bn bailout programme keeping Greece afloat at the price of budget cuts.
“At first sight this looks like a very strange marriage, but both parties share a strong opposition to austerity,” said Diego Iscaro, an analyst at IHS Global Insight.
The tie-up suggests Tsipras will keep up his confrontational stance against Greece’s creditors, who have dismissed his demands for a debt write-off and insisted the country needs reforms and austerity to get its finances back on track.
Yanis Varoufakis, an economist and outspoken blogger crusading against austerity, was expected to become finance minister when the cabinet is unveiled today, senior party officials said.
He wrote yesterday that Greeks had “put an end to a self-reinforcing crisis that produces indignity in Greece and feeds Europe’s darkest forces”.
Reaction from financial markets to Syriza’s victory was largely muted, with the euro recovering from a tumble to an 11-year low against the dollar on initial results.
Greek stocks fell 3%, led lower by bank stocks including Piraeus Bank which fell 17.6%. Greek 10-year bond yields rose but stayed below the levels seen in the run-up to the vote.
For the first time in more than 40 years, neither the New Democracy party of Samaras nor the centre-left PASOK, the two forces that had dominated Greek politics since the fall of a military junta in 1974, will be in power, beaten by a party that has until recently always been at the fringe.
Tsipras also intends to talk to the heads of centrist party To Potami and the communist KKE to seek outside support for his coalition.
Together with last week’s decision by the ECB to pump billions of euros into the eurozone’s flagging economy, Syriza’s victory marks a turning point in the long eurozone crisis.
It signals a move away from the budgetary rigour championed by Germany as the accepted approach to dealing with troubled economies, though it is unclear to what extent Syriza will be able to wring concessions and aid from creditors.
Italian Economy Minister Pier Carlo Padoan said the message from the Greek election was the need for more growth and jobs, and to find an equilibrium between that and budget rigour.
But Tsipras can expect strong resistance to his demands from Germany in particular and a series of European policymakers urged Syriza not to renege on previous governments’ commitments.
“There is no room for unilateral action in Europe,” ECB Executive Board member Benoit Coeure told Europe 1 radio, saying that it was important to play by the “European rules of the game”.
Tsipras has drawn the ire of lenders with his pledge to end budget cuts and heavy tax rises that have helped send the jobless rate over 25% and pushed millions into poverty.
But with Greece unable to tap the markets because of sky-high borrowing costs and facing about €10bn of debt payments this summer, he may find himself with limited room to fight creditors.
The new prime minister will also need a deal to unlock more than €7bn of outstanding aid to make debt payments in the summer.
Standard and Poor’s sent an early warning shot to Greece’s new government, saying it could downgrade its credit rating even before its next planned review in mid-March if things go badly.
Tsipras signs a book as he is sworn in as prime minister at the Presidential Palace in Athens.
