Last Sunday, after all of Alexis Tsipras’s trials and tribulations of the past nine months, Greece returned Mr. Tsipras to office with a government of very much the same complexion as that which it elected in January 2015.
This has to raise a fundamental question: is there any reason to believe that Mr. Tsipras’s second government will prove to be any more successful in dealing with Greece’s daunting economic challenges than was his first? This question would seem to be all the more pertinent considering that Greece’s economic challenges now appear to be even more acute than they were some nine months ago.
Former Greek prime minister and leader of leftist Syriza party Alexis Tsipras (L) raises his arms as his coalition partner and leader of the Independent Greeks party, Panos Kammenos applauds on stage after winning the general election in Athens, Greece, September 20, 2015. Greek voters returned Tsipras to power with a strong election victory on Sunday. REUTERS/Dimitris Michalakis.
To be sure, Mr. Tsipras has bought Greece a period of some political stability by ridding his party of its former fractious anti-Euro and radical-left rump. However, by choosing to again form a government with the anti-memorandum and nationalist Independent Greek Party, he wasted the opportunity of bolstering his government with the inclusion of more centrist parties like To Potami and PASOK. This has to be lamented, since those parties might have provided Mr. Tsipras’s new government with the experience and competence that his last government so sorely lacked.
The need for a competent Greek government will be all the more necessary now, considering that Greece has yet to implement the difficult parts of its third IMF-EU bailout agreement. These include painful pension and labor market reform as well as the introduction of further budget austerity. Making this all the more challenging are the facts that Greece has again dipped into economic recession, its banks are drowning in non-performing loans, and the conditions imposed on Greece by its official creditors are more onerous than might have been obtained at the start of Mr. Tsipras’ first government.
Hopefully, Mr. Tsipras will have learned from the mistakes of his first government. However, he is hardly instilling confidence either at home or abroad by repeating that he does not believe in the efficacy of the adjustment program that he just signed onto with Greece’s official creditors. This is yet another reason why I am not holding my breath for Greece’s profound economic crisis to be soon resolved.
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