By Kerin Hope, Financial Times
To older Greeks the harsh rhetoric unleashed against Germany by Alexis Tsipras and members of his leftwing government has a familiar tone. The new prime minister had barely started at primary school when the late Andreas Papandreou, a fiery orator and US-trained economist, swept into power in 1981 at the head of his PanHellenic Socialist Movement (Pasok).
Papandreou tapped into strong anti-western feeling among Greeks, pledging to pull the country out of the Nato alliance, which was blamed by many for failing to prevent Turkey’s military intervention in Cyprus in 1974.
He took aim at Washington, declaring his government would shut down four US military bases around Greece – a promise that satisfied deep-seated popular resentment over US backing for the 1967-74 colonels’ regime.
Middle-class Greeks would turn out in their thousands to hear the premier lambast the country’s western allies at a party rally in their town square. Foreign diplomats worried that Greece would break with Nato and join the nonaligned movement of countries that kept a distance from both Washington and Moscow.
Fast-forward to Mr Tsipras and his Syriza party and the narrative is strikingly similar, even though the targets are different and the issues economic rather than political.
Germany has replaced the US as the bane of austerity-battered Greeks, while the “troika” of bailout monitors from the European Commission, the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank rather than Nato is held responsible for the country’s woes. One reason for Mr Tsipras’s embrace of the Papandreou strategy is that senior members of “old” Pasok flocked to Syriza after their own party lost popularity because of its role in implementing harsh economic reforms.
Several prominent “old” Pasokists now hold key posts in the new administration. Another reason is that it has proved effective at containing internal dissent. Like his late predecessor, Mr Tsipras has to contend with a vociferous hard-left faction, which in Syriza’s case is fiercely opposed to a compromise with Greece’s international creditors.
The premier’s announcement this week of a renewed drive to pursue claims against Germany for unpaid war reparations of more than €160bn – claims which Berlin has long rejected – is one such example.
For all its capacity to raise hackles in western capitals, the Papandreou strategy eventually produced results that eased tensions with Washington and Brussels.
While Pasok’s propagandists were busy threatening to nationalise US assets, low-key talks on the military bases turned into an agreement for them to stay. Greece also quietly resumed participating in Nato exercises.
There are signs that Mr Tsipras would like to pull off a similar manoeuvre. His blast against “the crimes and disasters wrought by the forces of the Third Reich” came just as Greece began detailed negotiations with the “institutions” – as the troika of international creditors has been renamed – on completing the current bailout programme.
If the negotiations are successful, a €7.2bn tranche of bailout funds would be unlocked and Athens may even begin talks on a third bailout as proposed by Germany, ensuring its survival as a member of the eurozone.
But Mr Tsipras faces challenges to his authority that his predecessor dealt with while still in opposition. Papandreou kept his party under tight control and took decisions with a “kitchen cabinet” of trusted associates.
The new prime minister last month had to defend his government’s U-turn on completing the current bailout at a marathon 11-hour meeting of Syriza lawmakers where some 30 deputies reportedly voiced their opposition.
Mr Tsipras decided not to risk humiliation at a vote after an informal ballot of MPs suggested that the new government would be unable to push through its bailout decision without the support of pro-European opposition parties.
Bringing on board the party’s so-called Left Platform, groups ranging from Marxist-Leninists to supporters of the late Venezuelan Hugo Chavez, in the next few weeks is a task that might have defeated even Papandreou.
