Syriza leader under fire as radical left goes to war over austerity before electoral campaign gets under way

Greece’s pre-election campaign has turned ugly before it has even officially commenced, with senior figures – including the former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis – rounding on the prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, for his governance of the crisis-plagued country.

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Breaking the wary truce since his surprise resignation the day after Greeks voted to reject austerity in a referendum last month, Varoufakis has lashed out at the leftwing leader’s policy choices, saying in an interview in the New Review that Tsipras had decided “to surrender” to the punitive demands of international creditors keeping Athens afloat. Instead of remaining faithful to the anti-austerity platform on which his radical left Syriza party had been elected, the young prime minister had allowed his ego to get the better of him and made a conscious decision to become the “new De Gaulle, or Mitterrand more likely”.

In the wake of Tsipras’s unexpected move on Thursday to call early elections, Varoufakis said: “Tsipras made a decision on that night of the referendum not only to surrender to the troika but also to implement the terms of surrender on the basis that it is better that a progressive government implement terms of surrender that it despises than leave it to the local stooges of the troika, who would implement the same terms of surrender with enthusiasm.”

As a result, Syriza once the hope of Europe’s anti-austerity movement, had not only betrayed the cause but mutated into the very thing it had set out not to be. “This mutation I have already witnessed. Those in our party/government who underwent it, then turned against those who refused to mutate, the result being a split in the party that our people, the courageous voters who voted No, did not deserve,” he wrote.

The criticism is the closest Varoufakis has come to distancing himself from the man he did much to mentor in the nearly six months that he oversaw often fraught negotiations with the eurozone and the International Monetary Fund.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Alexis Tsipras, the prime minister of Greece, announces his resignation on Thursday, paving the way for snap elections next month

Tsipras’s rash decision to resign and call elections – the third poll to be held in Greece this year – the MP argued, amounted to a concerted effort by the leader to purge the party of dissent. “For it is clear,” he continued, “that once you start implementing policies it becomes untenable to say constantly: ‘I am passing law X through parliament even though I think it is toxic.’ At some point either you resign or you remove the cognitive dissonance by beginning to believe that law X ain’t that bad; perhaps it is what the doctor ordered.”

The broadside echoed the mounting criticism among leftists of Tsipras’s conversion to an advocate of tough reforms and fiscal policies since the country signed up to a third bailout of nearly €86bn in rescue funds last week. The terms of the accord, which foresees almost €13bn of savings and reforms being implemented over the course of the next three years, are the toughest Athens has been forced to accept since the eruption of its debt crisis in late 2009.

In July 62% of Greeks, at the behest of Tsipras, voted to reject policies that have been blamed for the nation’s extraordinary loss of GDP and economic depression in recent years. The prime minister’s last-minute U-turn ensuring Greece’s continued eurozone membership was the last straw for hardliners, who formally broke ranks with Syriza with the creation of their own political movement, Popular Unity, last week.

The party – with 25 MPs now the third-biggest political group in the 300-seat parliament – has already signalled that it will try to forge alliances with other anti-austerity forces, if, as expected, it receives an exploratory mandate to form a government on Monday. The main opposition centre-right New Democracy party was locked in talks over the weekend after receiving such a mandate on Friday in line with the Greek constitution, which gives every party the chance to form a government after an administration resigns.

Addressing reporters on Friday, Panagiotis Lafazanis, the veteran Marxist who now heads the breakaway party, said Popular Unity would not be afraid to pursue euro exit, insisting that the new movement would offer a “realistic alternative to the memorandum [bailout accord]”.

“We will become a major and decisive political force [whose MPs] will try to express the spirit and substance of the 62% who voted no to austerity,” he added referring to the 5 July memorandum. “The No of the referendum will not be an ‘orphan’ in these elections.”

Yesterday, the rebels were reinforced when Zoe Konstantopoulou, a prominent Syriza MP who is also the president of parliament, appeared to back the new force. “Of course we will exhaust the mandate [to form a government],” said Lafazanis after holding talks with Konstantopoulou.

But while the hardliners have the support of Syriza’s organised apparatus – and its youth wing – they lack the personal appeal of Tsipras, 41, who is still perceived to have taken on Greece’s creditors as no other leader before.

“He still has the power of momentum that has come with the perception that like David he tried to take on Goliath and did his best,” Aristides Hatzis, associate professor of economics and law at the University of Athens, said in an interview. “A third election in seven months could backfire on anyone, including someone as popular as Tsipras, but this is also an ideal time for him to ask for a new mandate before austerity measures begin to be felt and before rebels have the time to make alliances on a nation-wide level.”

But while Hatzis, like many, believes Tsipras’s gamble is likely to pay off, it is less likely that the new-look Syriza will be able to clinch an overall majority, once again paving the way to a coalition government and the prospect of renewed political instability. Whatever government emerges will have to enforce unpopular reforms and tax rises ranging from new levies on properties, road and income taxes. Few believe that Syriza will be able to implement such policies if it is not in a power-sharing arrangement with reform-minded pro-Europeans.

“By October, when the measures begin to bite and thousands of companies go bust, it is going to be very difficult for any government, especially one of the left,” said Aristides Hatzis. “Varoufakis is wrong. The good scenario would be if Tsipras does become a Mitterrand and makes the policy U-turns that the late French leader made. This is what Greece needs if it is to avoid the perfect political and economic storm in the future.”