Tsipras has a shot at greatness

Greece’s prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, survived a confidence vote in parliament and seems likely to obtain legislative approval for his highly controversial deal with neighboring Macedonia. Now he can contemplate his legacy, as he serves out what are likely to be his last months in office.
The vote’s outcome was no surprise. Tsipras likely was certain of victory before the first ballot was cast, and even Defense Minister Panos Kammenos, whose resignation had set off the government crisis, appeared to be sure the prime minister would remain until the next election. This strongly suggests the “crisis” over the Macedonia deal was engineered by Tsipras and Kammenos.
The PM was confident that he’d last until September at the head of a minority government, or at least have enough time to push through a few last measures, including a higher minimum wage and other moves to ease the austerity policies that had been required to get Greece through a series of international bailouts.
For the deal itself, Tsipras has done same precise vote-counting and targeted canvassing. Although he is no longer the leftist radical who came to power on promises to end austerity and free Greece from creditors’ diktat, he remains a passionate political risk-taker. Even if he loses the next election, as polls suggest, he’s had a remarkable run.
Tsipras himself has said he considers the Macedonia deal, reached in June, “one of the most important legacies” of his tenure. The agreement resolves one of the most intractable conflicts remaining since the Balkan wars and makes it possible for the EU eventually to encompass the entire Western Balkans. As progress is made towards that goal, Greece will have a chance to become an important regional hub.
Laying the foundation for this success despite strong nationalist opposition could be Tsipras’s biggest achievement. He also would like to be remembered as the leader who averted Greece’s economic collapse.
Tsipras made things worse by calling a pointless referendum on creditors’ demands in 2015 and insisting that Greeks could vote away the need for fiscal common sense. The 288 billion euro series of bailouts, the biggest in history, might not have been accompanied by de facto external management had it not been for Tsipras’s negotiating errors.
Greece is out of the latest bailout now. But it isn’t out of the woods. Unemployment is still close to 19%, the highest rate in the EU, even though Tsipras started out with about 26%. Economic growth of about 2% isn’t enough to get back to the pre-crisis level in the foreseeable future.
In other words, Greeks won’t recall Tsipras’s tenure as a time of revival. And leftists, in Greece and across Europe, will remember him as a traitor to the cause, who, instead of realising the promise of his initial victory, embraced austerity policies and undermined the chances of leftist parties everywhere by making them look unserious and unable to put their beliefs into practice.
The country’s economic problems will be up to Tsipras’s more economically aware and skillful successors to fix, using the same methods as centrist governments have done in Spain, Portugal and Ireland. But the prime minister’s political talent, honed by tougher battles than most modern Western leaders have faced, may still make him a historic figure. The vote on the Macedonia deal will decide whether that will happen.

—Bloomberg

Leonid Bershidsky is Bloomberg Opinion’s Europe columnist. He was the founding editor of the Russian business daily Vedomosti and founded the opinion website Slon.ru.