Tsipras sworn in as PM under new anti-bailout coalition

Syriza’s success likely to empower other anti-austerity movements across the region’s economically depressed south

January 27, 2015 12:03 am | Updated April 03, 2016 04:44 am IST - ATHENS

REFILE - QUALITY REPEAT
Alexis Tsipras, Syriza party leader and winner of the Greek parliamentary elections, signs papers appointing him as Greece's first leftist prime minister after his swearing-in ceremony at the presidential palace in Athens January 26, 2015. REUTERS/Yannis Behrakis (GREECE - Tags: POLITICS ELECTIONS)

REFILE - QUALITY REPEAT
 Alexis Tsipras, Syriza party leader and winner of the Greek parliamentary elections, signs papers appointing him as Greece's first leftist prime minister after his swearing-in ceremony at the presidential palace in Athens January 26, 2015. REUTERS/Yannis Behrakis (GREECE - Tags: POLITICS ELECTIONS)

Greek left-wing leader Alexis Tsipras was sworn in on Monday as the Prime Minister of a new hard-line, anti-bailout government determined to face down international lenders and end nearly five years of tough economic measures.

The decisive victory by Mr. Tsipras’ Syriza in Sunday’s snap election reignites fears of new financial troubles in the country that set off the regional crisis in 2009. It is also the first time a member of the 19-nation eurozone will be led by parties rejecting German-backed austerity.

Mr. Tsipras’ success is also likely to empower Europe’s fringe parties, including other anti-austerity movements across the region’s economically-depressed south. The trouncing of the conservatives represents a defeat of Europe’s middle-ground political guard, which has dallied on a growth-versus-budget discipline debate for five years while voters suffered.

“We have an uphill road ahead,” Mr. Tsipras told President Karolos Papoulias just before being sworn in as Prime Minister in a ceremony that eschewed the traditional oath on a Bible and blessing with basil and water. Mr. Tsipras met Greece’s Archbishop Ieronymos to say he planned to take a non-religious oath.

Within hours of victory on a campaign of “Hope is coming!”, the 40-year-old Tsipras sealed a coalition deal with the small Independent Greeks party which also opposes Greece’s EU/IMF aid programme though the two parties are at odds on many social issues like illegal immigration.

Syriza won 149 seats in the 300-seat Parliament, leaving it just two seats short of an outright majority and in need of a coalition partner. The Independent Greeks won 13 seats.

The alliance is an unusual one between parties on the opposite end of the political spectrum brought together by a mutual hatred of the €240-billion bailout programme keeping Greece afloat at the price of budget cuts. The alliance suggests a hard-line stance against Greece’s creditors, who have dismissed Mr. Tsipras’s demands for a debt writeoff and insisted the country stay on the path of reforms and austerity to get its finances back on track.

For the first time in more than 40 years, neither the New Democracy party of Samaras nor the centre-left PASOK, the two forces that had dominated Greek politics since the fall of a military junta in 1974, will be in power, beaten by a party that has until recently always been at the fringe.

Together with last week’s decision by the ECB to pump billions of euros into the eurozone’s flagging economy despite objections from Germany, Syriza’s victory marks a turning point in the long eurozone crisis.

It signals a move away from the budgetary rigour championed by Germany as the accepted approach to dealing with troubled economies, though it is unclear the extent to which Syriza will be able to wring concessions and aid from creditors.

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