Daily Times

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has been implementing his re-election strategy to the letter over the past six months, steering Greece out of a humiliating bailout and resolving a decades-old dispute with neighbouring Macedonia.

So far, it isn’t paying off. With a general election no more than eight months away, his Syriza party is far behind in opinion polls.

That is despite two signature projects since last summer, evidence that the economy is climbing out of years of depression and willingness at last among investors to lend.

Tsipras was elected as a firebrand leftist in 2015 on a promise to reject the austerity required in the bailout.

He later caved in to the lenders’ demands and has reinvented himself as a conformist. Now, after years of austerity many ordinary voters cannot afford to keep the lights on, others are deeply indebted, and almost one in five Greeks is unemployed.

“Our debt is huge and it’s still growing, unemployment is still very high,” said 30-year-old Athens resident Panagiotis, an environmentalist who works in the private sector.

“The crisis isn’t over. That’s a lie, we are not fools.”

Sources close to the prime minister say his strategy is only now reaching the point where his government can deliver on its pre-election promises and make amends for bailout pain — a plan he says aims at “fair growth”.

Creditors released Greece from its third bailout in August, putting it back on the path to full financial independence.

Tsipras has since used greater fiscal freedom to scrap further pension cuts, cut property and corporate taxes and ease some social security contributions. He raised the minimum wage for the first time in a decade, by 11 percent.

He also wants to extend a reduced value-added tax regime for five islands with huge migrant arrivals in past years, and to make it easier for people to pay off pension-fund arrears and bank loans, government officials said.

Tsipras aims to hire thousands of public-sector workers by 2020 as well as making constitutional reforms to separate the Greek Orthodox Church clearly from the state, important to left-wing voters.

Moves are also under way to extend Greece’s western maritime boundaries to 12 miles offshore from six, two officials said.

Published in Daily Times, February 12^th 2019.