This is the first time since the Spanish revolution of 1936 that a left party wins general elections in Europe. In this weekend’s national elections in Greece the leftist SYRIZA took 149 out of 300 seats and will now form a coalition government with a small right-wing anti-austerity party to run the country... SYRIZA is the outcome of a 15 year collaboration between divergent political groups within the fragmented Greek left, which started at the times of the alter-globalization movement. It climbed from 4% to 27% in the 2012 elections, when it managed to represent the social dynamics of the massive social movements, which at that time shook the country and overthrew the previous PASOK government. As movements failed to provide tangible alternatives and the next ND-PASOK coalition government pushed harder on the neoliberal restructuring and its extreme right political agenda, the oppressed strata of Greek society again bestowed their hopes in representative politics. In this context, SYRIZA has won yesterday’s elections by forging a social alliance on two specific proposals: (1) a social salvation plan to ameliorate the consequences of the neoliberal onslaught on the lower classes, and (2) a plan to re-negotiate the Greek public debt with the EU and the IMF, in order to make it sustainable. Although this moderate political program does not sound leftist, it constitutes a radical change of course from the neoliberal orthodoxy, which has been cemented in both the EU and global institutions, and gives hope not only for Greece but also for wider power shifts in the European Union.
Posted on: Tue, 27 Jan 2015 23:45:00 +0000
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