Is Tsipras a genius?

By David Patrikarakos

The Greek prime minister plays a wild card in the battle with his nation’s creditors.

“Who’s going to pull the snake out of the hole?” It’s a common Greek expression that means: “Which fool can I get to stick his hand into the unknown? Who can I get to take a risk on my behalf?”
Greece is definitely in a hole, largely — though not totally — of its own making. But when Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras unilaterally sank the latest round of bailout talks with his country’s creditors and called a referendum for July 5, it was clear he’d decided that enough was enough. The creditors clearly weren’t going to compromise. He would fail to deliver on his promises to the Greek people and his party. He needed someone, preferably his entire country, to get the snake out of the hole.
Tsipras has become trapped between his promises to end austerity and bring growth to Greece and the refusal of Greece’s creditors to bend to his wishes. And trapped between the anti-Euro hard left of his party and its Social Democrat right. Trapped and cornered, he lashed out, and he did so in a seemingly reckless manner in which Greeks politics is all too often conducted.
There’s no doubt that the impetuous Tsipras shocked everyone with his referendum wild card. EU officials expressed their dismay in no uncertain terms while Greek-watchers across the globe scrambled to decipher the motivations behind it.
Which is a tough job, especially now that Tsipras appears to have done yet another Kolotoumba, or somersault. On July 1, he sent eurozone ministers a letter accepting most of their previous conditions, with only some minor conflicting demands. Shortly after that, he went on national TV to assure the Greek people that he would protect their pensions and wages and denounced those saying he wanted Greece out of the Euro as “liars.”
This is politics at its most bipolar.

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So is Tsipras brilliant or crazy? Was calling the referendum (and his subsequent behavior) a masterstroke or just plain psycho?
“Personally, I think he’s crazy or incompetent,” says a Greek economist who declines to be named. “But brilliance can have many aspects, too: he could be brilliant for the good of his own party, but not of the Greeks. I used to be of the view that he had democratic credentials, but over the past six months of government, I think he’s putting party politics and reputation above good governance and the people.
It’s clear that Tsipras has failed to fulfil his mandate of delivering the Greek people from the ravages of austerity. It’s also clear that he has alienated the creditors and faces the very real possibility of revolt from the far left elements of Syriza. With all this in mind, calling a referendum while still making overtures to Greece’s creditors makes perfect sense within the parameters of domestic Greek politics — which, compared with the politics of other European countries, often operates on a quite different plane of logic. In Greece, political good sense is often contingently strategic, designed to win the next skirmish, the next political confrontation. The longer war is paid less heed. Greek politics is short-term. The long term is for Germans.
If Greece votes No to the referendum’s question — which is both ridiculously worded and needlessly complicated, designed, it could be argued, to make it impossible for people to vote Yes to something so absurdly vague and complex — then Tsipras likely calculates that his position will be so strengthened by a fresh democratic mandate that it will be hard for the creditors to ignore. It will also appease the anti-EU left of his party and quell internal dissent. Plus, he will have kept his word to the Greek people to fight austerity. He stays in power. Verdict: genius, in domestic political terms.
It is clear that this is the vote he would prefer. Over the last two or three days, both party and state apparatus have been mobilized to push for a No. Thousands of posters have sprung up across Athens advocating for a No vote, hardly any for a Yes. In the late hours of July 1, Tsipras’ office released a communiqué in which the prime minister urged Greeks “to strengthen this negotiating effort with your support,” and inviting them “to say No to the memorandum measures that are destroying Europe.”
Oxi. No. It’s a powerful word in Greece. On October 28, 1940, when Benito Mussolini demanded that Athens allow Italian forces to occupy parts of Greece, Greek Prime Minister Ioannis Metaxas replied, simply, “oxi”; and thus did Greece enter World War II. Each year Oxi day is national holiday in Greece. There is a strain of defiance in the Greek character that Tsipras’ often highly-charged domestic rhetoric is clearly designed to target. Verdict: not crazy; and if not quite the stuff of genius, then certainly very canny.
If, however, the vote goes Yes (which polls increasingly seem to discount), Tsipras can return to the creditors, again with a fresh democrat mandate, to accept their conditions while having personally saved face. Meanwhile, Syriza’s left will have to suck it up. It’s the will of the people, after all. He stays in power. Verdict: again, not crazy at all.
In the meantime of course, everything tumbles around him. Greek banks are closed and cash withdrawals from ATMs limited to just €60 per day. Everybody is confused; everybody is angry. It’s politics at its most intense and most dangerous. And someone is going to have to pull that snake out of that hole. Tsipras just wants to ensure that it isn’t him.