Greek Opposition Leader Tsipras Steps Down After Defeat

Paul Tugwell and Sotiris Nikas
·2 min read
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(Bloomberg) -- Greece’s ex-Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, who once riled European leaders and put in danger the country’s participation in the euro area, resigned from his party after its share of the vote in Sunday’s general election fell below the already low May result.

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“I have decided to proceed with the election of a new leadership by directly resorting to the procedures in which I will not be a candidate,” Tsipras said.

In May’s balloting, Tsipras won 20.1% of the vote, down from 31.5% in 2019. In this week’s election, he saw Syriza dropping to 17.8%, prompting him to step down after being its leader for 15 years since the age of 34.

The president of the leftist Syriza party became prime minister in early 2015, promising to get rid of the international bailouts that started in 2010 and ushered in a period of severe austerity. Almost a third of the work force couldn’t find a job at the peak of the decade-long debt crisis.

Tsipras tried to re-negotiate the terms of the programs that kept the country afloat and even held a referendum in the summer of the same year. He then ignored the results, which overwhelmingly rejected austerity amid the closure of the country’s banks for about a month, and agreed to a new third bailout.

Right after this, Tsipras called for snap elections in September, asking people to mandate him to implement the new bailout, and he won. During this term, Greece followed all the provisions of the program agreed with its official creditors.

In the foreign policy field, Tsipras was the leader who struck a deal with Greece’s northern neighbor that led it being renamed the Republic of North Macedonia. The issue was pending for decades and the move helped North Macedonia win membership in the NATO alliance. Tsipras he won international praise for the deal, but he suffered criticism internally that cost him votes in the 2019 election when he lost power.

“I’m proud of what we achieved,” Tsipras said, mentioning the debt relief deal and the agreement on North Macedonia among others. “The negative election result must and should be the beginning of a new cycle.”

(Updates with more context from seventh paragraph.)

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