International

'Everywhere that the people threaten to settle accounts with those who are responsible for the present crisis, they are threatened in turn with hell and damnation. It reminds me of the time of the referendum on the European Constitution. But just as it failed to do then, this will not help. Voters are much wiser than politicians continually think.’ This is what SP Senator Tiny Kox, president of the United European Left in the Council of Europe, told Alexis Tsipras, the youthful leader of the successful left party Syriza, at a meeting of the Council’s Parliamentary Assembly in Berlin on Tuesday.

Syriza is well on the way to becoming one of Greece’s biggest parties, despite all the international interference. 'A whole range of European government leaders have been meddling in the Greek elections,’ said Kox. ‘Everyone is afraid that the Greeks will vote left. I hope that the Greek voters will not allow this interference to lead them astray and instead simply follow their heart and their intelligence in the coming election.’ The elections take place on 17th June.

Alexis Tsipras

Tsipras and Kox were speaking in the German capital and discussed support which left European parties could give to their Greek sister party in this time of crisis. Negative economic growth in Greece is only accelerating and unemployment is approaching 20%. Wages have been cut hugely and the public sector rapidly dismantled.

Alexis Tsipras made it clear that this is a dead-end strategy. ‘As a left party we stand for social justice. That’s something completely different to the demolition job into which Brussels is trying to force us and with which the established parties in Greece want to go along. We want Greece to have once more the chance to rebuild itself, if possible within the European Union and with the euro. In that way we can gradually start to collect taxes again, bring the society to order, and eventually also pay off the loans we have taken out. If we go bankrupt, everyone will really have problems.’ Kox agrees. ‘After the Second World War Europe received aid under the Marshall Plan, and could by these means get back on its feet. Why then are we now stripping the Greeks to the bone? That makes no sense!’

In Kox’s view it would help the Greeks if modern left parties in other countries were to challenge the established parties and present themselves as an alternative. 'Everyone talks very loudly about how Greece is corrupt and how it is responsible for the chaos. That’s also the opinion of the Greek people. That’s why they’re putting their confidence in Alexis Tsipras and his party, who have clean hands and who to date have proved a reliable ally in the fight against the destruction of jobs and of social provisions. I don’t say they’re wrong. On the contrary, it is hypocritical of those who cried alas and woe over the Greek political establishment now all of a sudden to cry alas and woe over a political alternative to this chaos and corruption.'

Kox points to the emergence recently of modern left parties in countries such as Denmark, Norway, Iceland and Finland. ‘It’s absolutely clear,’ he says, ‘that this crisis comes from the right – and that the left is best equipped to find a way out of it, and not at the cost of social and democratic rights. More and more Europeans think just the same!’