All 12 polls published so far this year predict Syriza's electoral demise. Alexis Tsipras says he thinks they are wrong
facing imminent electoral extinction Alexis Tsipras, the 44-year-old prime minister of Greece, seems as untroubled as Socrates preparing to drink his hemlock. For a start, he affects not to believe the polls. Even though all 12 of those published since the start of the year show his party, Syriza, losing to its rival, New Democracy , nine of them by double-digit margins, he thinks they are systematically wrong. “They have a bad record,” he says.
Credibility matters to Mr Tsipras, for his party and for Greece itself. He insists he intends to see his term through, as a way of proving that Greece has recovered from the chaos it was cast into by the 2008 financial crisis. As the country’scrashed by 25%, Greece saw five general elections between 2009 and 2015. “I will not hold an early election, because I want to show that this is a country of normality.
Although tax collection has been improved, little has been done by Syriza to boost Greek productivity. This betokens problems to come. “For the moment, there is still surplus capacity in the economy, but soon we will require a lot more investment if we are to grow,” says the banker. But with Greek banks sitting on non-performing loans of around 45% of their books, Greece’s dismal investment rate will not shift much.
If Mr Tsipras’s days look to be numbered, what of the man likely to replace him later this year? Kyriakos Mitsotakis, the leader of New Democracy, is the polar opposite of the charismatic prime minister. Geeky and soft-spoken where Mr Tsipras is confident and forceful, Mr Mitsotakis could be a hard sell to ordinary Greeks. A graduate of Harvard Business School and the son of a former prime minister, he might have been sketched by a caricaturist to typify the Athens elite.
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