Most of these predictions seem very accurate to me, except the last one. The author seems to believe that Syriza are just another variation on ordinary austerian social democrats: big talk before the election, little action once in power. And it does make sense, since thats what usually happens. Except in the last few weeks, I personally have gained an impression that this is not going to be business-as-usual. In a nutshell, Tsipras is not Hollande. And Syriza means what it says. Thats not necessarily a recipe for success. But it seems to me Syriza would rather go down in flames than let its wings be clipped by powers that be. This, on the other hand, is very much to the point: European elites are obsessed with Weimar Germany comparisons, i.e. weak democracies being threatened by strong extremist parties. ... But whereas extremists of left and right gained huge pluralities of the votes in Weimar Germany, they are relatively small in contemporary Greece. The neo-Stalinist Communist Party of Greece (KKE) has been reduced to around 5 percent of the vote after the end of the Cold War, whereas the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn seems to also have hit its limits of roughly 7-8 percent ... Syriza is essentially a democratic party, i.e. supporting popular sovereignty and majority rule, and will come to terms (grudgingly) with accepting pluralism and minority rights. Even if they collaborate with the KKE at times, which seems highly uncertain at this point as KKE considers Syriza members to be bourgeois traitors, they will not do so at the price of fundamental democratic procedures and values.
Posted on: Mon, 26 Jan 2015 07:22:37 +0000
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