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Alexis Tsipras, the leader of Greek opposition party Syriza, has resigned days after his leftwing party was trounced in elections in which it won less than 18 per cent of the vote.
Tsipras, who was prime minister from 2015 to 2019 when Greece had faced a renewed threat of a eurozone exit as he opposed the terms of a financial bailout, said it was time for the party to begin a new era.
“As paradoxical as it might seem, the negative result can — and must — become the beginning of this cycle,” he said in a televised address on Thursday, calling his decision to step down “painful”.
Questions were raised over Tsipras’s leadership after his party’s crushing defeat by Kyriakos Mitsotakis’s centre-right New Democracy party by a margin of more than 22 per cent in Sunday’s election. Support for Syriza shrank from the 20.1 per cent it managed in the first round in May.
Tsipras’s achievements as premier, including negotiating a peace agreement with North Macedonia, taking Greece back into the financial markets and striking a debt reduction deal with the country’s creditors, were largely overshadowed by memories of his brinkmanship during his first year in office when Greece almost crashed out of the eurozone.
In his resignation speech on Thursday, Tsipras said he had “the luck and honour” to be Greece’s first leftwing prime minister. “The journey we took together was dangerous, full of pitfalls, but exciting.”
Syriza was formed in 2004 as a coalition of small radical parties from the extreme left to more moderate members, which coalesced over their opposition to the economic reforms demanded by Greece’s creditors in return for bailouts during the financial crisis.
Its leap from a fringe party, which won just 4.6 per cent of the vote in the 2009 election, to taking power in 2015 was accredited to Tsipras and his pledge to end the harsh austerity imposed by other EU member states and the IMF.
Many analysts blamed Syriza’s poor election showing last weekend on its failure to change its rhetoric and outgrow its role as a party of crisis while the country had moved on.
Stella Ladi, an associate professor in public policy at Queen Mary University of London, said Tsipras’s decision to resign rather than cling on as leader after two electoral defeats could be seen as “Syriza’s path to maturity”.
The new leader will have to decide on the direction of the party. A significant faction believes that Syriza should remain a staunchly leftwing party, while others claim that only a shift towards the centre will return it to power.
One figure tipped as a possible successor to Tsipras is Effie Achtsioglou, a 38-year-old former labour minister who appears to have the support of a section of the party.
“If Syriza doesn’t find an equally charismatic leader, that might mean it will be further weakened,” said Ladi. “What is clear is that this is going to be a painful process for the party, and its unity will be challenged.”