Shakespeare’s “The Comedy of Errors” is a great source of inspiration for commenting on a lot of the things we are hearing from Alexis Tsipras and his shadow cabinet at the Greek Left Alliance (ELAS) about the “new” political space they want to create with a “new paradigm of political participation and action.”
“I would call it a new political ethos. One that does not bow to the allure of power,” said the party’s president, who served as Greece’s prime minister from 2015 to 2019. Tsipras is promising all sorts of newness, from building “a different relationship between the citizen and politics,” to challenging “the stereotype that all politicians are the same.”
In one television interview, in fact, he claimed that his comeback is not about “logging percentages in the polls,” but about turning the left into a “governing” force rather than a “protest” force.
So, after basically proclaiming in every way possible that SYRIZA – the party he once led – is finished, he’s watching the ship go down from a safe distance. In response, some of his former comrades have taken a stand on the sinking prow to declare their allegiance to a left “that governs to change, not to manage” – until their voice is lost in the waves.
