Greece: No to Austerity!

The Radical Coalition of the Left (Syriza) has become Greece's second-largest party following its dramatic success in Sunday's parliamentary election.

It has campaigned steadfastly against the recovery blueprint for Greece drawn up by the European Union and International Monetary Fund.

Previously Greece's fifth largest party, this loosely-knit coalition of left-wing groups has new influence as the country embarks on a tortuous course to form a new government and complete painful economic reforms.

The party is led by the country's youngest political leader, the brash and self-assured Alexis Tsipras.

The 37-year-old believes Greece is heading in the wrong direction and ought to ditch the international bailout.

His attacks on the unpopular EU-IMF plan, known in Greece as the ''memorandum'', tapped into a deep vein of outrage.

He said the election result represented radical change in both Greece and Europe, and showed that people were not prepared to settle for "barbarous memorandums" and bailouts.

He has promised to freeze payments to creditors and renegotiate measures included in Greece's latest 130bn-euro ($173bn; £110bn) rescue package.

If it was not for a peculiarity of the Greek electoral system, which awards an extra 50 seats to the party that tops the polls, pro-austerity parties would have little hope of forming a stable and credible government.


The anti-austerity parties, the Syriza grouping and the KKE Communist Party, took between them over 25 per cent of the votes.

The conclusion must be, from both the French and the Greek results, that the anti-cuts, anti-austerity movement is gathering force and, while neither result indicates a decisive swing against the financiers' Europe, the initiative is now clearly with the left.

There is enough in these figures to encourage all those working in the trade unions and the left in Europe to redouble their efforts to ditch the puppet governments of the speculators and the banks.