Syriza

Athens Protesters Call For Greece To Defy Troika & Leave Euro

June 22, 2015 Ruadhán Mac Cormaic, www.irishtimes.com Resist! Austerity, Europe, Greece, IMF, Syriza

By Ruadhán Mac Cormaic in Irish Times - From the steps of the imposing parliament building, Katherina Sergidou gestures at the swelling crowd that stretches out across Syntagma Square, filling the night sky with defiant chants. “We’re here to show there are a lot of us,” she says proudly. “A big window has opened – a window of change.” On the eve of an emergency EU summit aimed at striking an 11th-hour deal to end the stand-off between Greece and its lenders, thousands took to the streets of Athens last night to keep up the pressure on Greece’s government, led by the left-radical Syriza, and to show defiance in the face of pressure from the EU and the IMF. The protest, organised by left-wing parties and trade unions, was also designed as a response to a right-wing protest held in the city at the weekend.

Piven On Syriza & Greece’s Prospects For Fighting Austerity

April 21, 2015 Alexandros Orphanides, www.inthesetimes.com Strategize! Elections, Greece, Politics, Social Change, Syriza

Anybody who is running for an election wants to win enough votes to take the seat for which she or he is campaigning. To do that, they tend to be conciliatory; they don’t want to make any enemies. They want to win just enough to get over the electoral barrier. They tend to be consensual, they tend to not want to make trouble. They want to keep everyone that voted for them last time and add the few more that they need to get over the hump. Movements are very different. They are dynamic. How they grow, how they succeed is very different. Protest movements in particular do two things. They identify issues that politicians want to ignore, because the politicians want to paste together a coalition that can win. Movement leaders, on the other hand, want to identify the issues that can mobilize people.

Anarchists Storm Greek Ruling Party HQ

March 9, 2015 AFP, www.france24.com Educate! Anarchism, Greece, Prison, Syriza, Torture

Anarchists occupied Greece's ruling party headquarters on Sunday in support of hunger strikers protesting against conditions in the country's maximum-security jails. A group of 50 anarchists burst into the offices of the radical left-wing Syriza party in downtown Athens on Sunday, forcing staff to leave the building, party officials said. "I was inside my office giving my first official interview to a radio station," the party's new spokeswoman Rania Svigou told AFP. "I had locked the door so I wouldn't be disturbed. Then I heard banging and shouting." she said. "I finished the interview and went out to see what was happening and they told us to get out," she added. Svigou said party workers did not call the police. Syriza has often criticised heavy-handed policing of anti-austerity protests in the past.

Ending Austerity In Greece: Time For Plan B?

February 27, 2015 Jerome Roos, www.roarmag.org Resist! Austerity, Europe, Greece, Syriza

When the Eurogroup accepted Greece’s reform proposals on Tuesday, investors and EU leaders let out a collective sigh of relief: it appears that the bombshell of a disorderly Greek exit from the Eurozone has been diffused, at least until the start of the summer. In return for a significant roll-back of its campaign pledges, Greece’s freshly inaugurated government secured a four-month extension of its current bailout program and thereby managed to avert a potentially catastrophic bank run that would likely have resulted in Grexit. But while Greece’s creditors seemed content, the agreement immediately unleashed a bitter debate within the governing leftist party Syriza. Prime Minister Tsipras may have declared a tentative victory for his anti-austerity coalition, but some influential party members strongly criticized what they perceived to be an unacceptable climbdown.

Bankers Trump Greek Democracy In Europe

February 25, 2015 Kevin Zeese, www.PopularResistance.org Resist! Austerity, Debt, Finance and the Economy, Greece, Syriza

The negotiations clarified what the Greek government (and any other who defies the Troika) is facing. it is only because we have now had the experience of an anti-austerity government go to the wall in an attempt to reverse austerity within the eurozone that we can now contemplate the emergence of a significant anti-euro constituency within Greece. Further, there will be opportunities to build this: every time the troika rejects a needed reform, this can and should be held up as an object lesson in what Europe means. So, Syriza helped more than the re-election of New Democracy would have to understand the true situation. This will result in a debate within Syriza: . . . there will now be a huge argument within Syriza over the acceptance of this deal, and the old slogan of 'not one sacrifice for the euro' will make a come back. Manolis Glezos, an iconic figure from the antifascist resistance and prominent within Syriza, is the first to have gone public with his dissent. He is calling for a campaign up and down the party not to accept this deal, and will vote against it. He will not be the last. Next week, there will be a rally in Syntagma Square, with the slogan 'We're not afraid of Grexit'. He concludes describing this moment as "a nodal point and not the end point in the process of Greek workers finding a solution to their dilemma."

Podemos Poses Major Threat To Spanish Political Establishment

February 5, 2015 Vicente Navarro, www.socialeurope.eu Educate! Europe, Greece, Left, Spain, Syriza

Something is happening in Spain. A party that was only founded a year ago, Podemos, with a clear left-wing programme, could well gain a majority in the Spanish Parliament if an election were held today. Following the victory of Syriza in the Greek elections on 25 January, speculation has been raised as to whether Podemos could achieve a similar feat in Spain’s parliamentary elections later this year, but what is driving the party’s success? Support for Podemos is intricately linked to the policies pursued by the conservative People’s Party government, led by Mariano Rajoy. These policies have included the largest cuts in public social expenditures (dismantling the underfunded Spanish welfare state) since democracy was established in Spain in 1978, and the toughest labour reforms pursued in the same period, which have substantially deteriorated labour market conditions.

The Greek Left, A Call For Pan-European Change

January 27, 2015 Antonis Broumas, www.roarmag.org Educate! Elections, Europe, Greece, Left, Syriza

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. After seven years of neoliberal overkill the Greek people overthrew the two-party regime that has been governing the country for the past 40 years with socially catastrophic results. The populist-right New Democracy (ND) party took 27,8% and the ex-socialist (now turned neoliberal) PASOK received a petty 4,6% of the votes. SYRIZA has increased its electoral base by 10% since the 2012 elections, by amassing the votes of the underclasses and the violently proletarianized lower middle class.

Syriza’s Historic Win Puts Greece On Collision Course With Europe

January 27, 2015 Ian Traynor and Helena Smith, www.theguardian.com Educate! Elections, Greece, Left, Politics, Syriza

Voters handed power to Alexis Tsipras, the charismatic 40-year-old former communist who leads the umbrella coalition of assorted leftists known as Syriza. He cruised to an eight-point victory over the incumbent centre-right New Democracy party, according to exit polls and projections after 99% of votes had been counted. The result surpassed pollster predictions and marginalised the two mainstream parties that have run the country since the military junta’s fall in 1974. It appeared, however, that Syriza would win 149 seats – just short of securing the 151 of 300 seats that would enable Tsipras to govern without coalition partners. “The sovereign Greek people today have given a clear, strong, indisputable mandate,” Tsipras told a crowd of rapturous flag-waving party supporters.

Prospects And Consequences Of Syriza Government

January 26, 2015 Roger Strassburg and James Galbraith, www.economistsview.typepad.com Educate! European Union (EU), Finance and the Economy, Greece, Syriza

That said, what is the leverage that would be applied to the Greek government if it chooses to recognize this reality and take a different path? In fact the leverage available is not zero, but it's limited to some measures that would be fairly extreme in ordinary conditions. On the one hand, there are certain parts of the debt that should ordinarily be rolled over. Since the debt is now almost all – all the significant parts of it are in the hands of public authorities, the question of whether they would roll it over is a policy question for them. In some sense they have the ability, if they were to choose, to place the Greeks in technical default, but one has to ask what happens under those circumstances, and the answer is, I would think, not very much.

Syriza Wins, Declares End To ‘Vicious Cycle Of Austerity’

January 26, 2015 The Guardian, www.theguardian.com Organize! Elections, Europe, Greece, Left, Syriza

The anti-austerity far left party Syriza has won the Greek election by a decisive margin, but just short of an outright majority. With more than three-quarters of the results in Syriza is projected to win 149 seats in the 300 seat parliament. Syriza leader Alexis Tsipras said his party’s victory marked an end to the “viscious cycle of austerity”. Referring to the neoliberal conditions set by the IMF, the European Commission and the European Central Bank, he said: “ The verdict of the Greek people renders the troika a thing of the past for our common European framework.”

SYRIZA Rising: What’s Next For The Movements In Greece?

October 2, 2014 Antonis Broumas and Theodoros Karyotis, www.roarmag.com Educate! Greece, Left, Neoliberalism, Syriza

In this socio-historical context, the possibility of a left-wing government emerges in Europe, with the left-wing coalition of SYRIZA in Greece and newcomer Podemos in Spain in its vanguard, as a response to the prospect of neoliberal authoritarianism consolidated on a nationalist basis. Periods of crisis are moments of social antagonism, in which the positions of contesting social forces are liquefied. In the present crisis, autonomous social movements emerge from the contradictions of modern capitalism as the main collective subjects with a potential for radical transformation and social change. They constitute the main opponent of capitalist domination in the present social confrontation and any conflicts inside the state and government apparatus are essentially a reflection of the ebb and tide of social mobilizations.

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