Greek elections: Embattled Alexis Tsipras asks country for second chance

Greece’s radical former prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, will ask voters for a “second chance” this weekend as a disillusioned Greek electorate heads to the polling booths for the third time in nine months.

Just two months after Mr Tsipras and his Left-wing Syriza party was forced to capitulate humiliatingly to Greece’s Eurozone creditors, the 41-year-old now finds himself running neck-and-neck in the polls with the conservative New Democracy party.

• Battered Greek banks to flout Brussels new 'bail-in' rules

Mr Tsipras, who was first elected prime minister last January, called a snap election last month after his party split over his decision to sign up Greece to the €86bn rescue package that will demand years of further austerity from already-exhausted Greek voters.

"Syriza is here. Hope is here," Mr Tsipras told a rally of several thousand of his flag-waving supporters in Athens's Syntagma Square on Friday night.

"Our struggle will not be a parenthesis, we will win a third mandate so that we can continue our struggle for a full four years."

Mr Tsipras was speaking after a stream of leaders from Spain, Germany and France defended his decision to sign the arduous bailout agreement, and urged the crowd to continue to struggle against Brussels and the banks.

"Our struggle shook the whole of Europe for seven months, our country was front page news," he said of his ultimately futile attempt to force Greece's EuroZone creditors to back down over austerity.

"Greece is not just a visitor in Europe," he added, "Greece must play a major role in changing Europe."

Mr Tsipras brushed aside his own failure to force change on the Eurogroup, attacking instead his opponents in the conservative New Democracy party.

"Who is best to negotiate on the debt?," he asked rhetorically, "The people [New Democracy] who said it was sustainable?"

"No. Only Syriza can defend the people, with the support of the people".

"This Left party is the party that dares to bleed, so the people don't bleed".

Mr Tsipras's final rally of a lack-lustre campaign was attended by Pablo Iglesias, leader of Spain's anti-establishment Podemos party.

With both major parties - Syriza and New Democracy - committed to implementing the Eurozone reforms package, analysts have predicted a low-turnout election as both parties struggled to motivate their voters.

At a Syriza campaign tent in Athens on Friday, student campaign workers who were meant to be distributing campaign literature instead sat at a table completing their essays.

“It’s the quietist campaign I’ve ever seen,” said Vicky Tsefala, a 23-year-old Syriza volunteer who has worked for the party since 2008.

She remains convinced that Mr Tsipras can overcome the political humiliation of making big promises to force Eurozone creditors to back down over their austerity demands in January - only to then sign up to them in full in chaotic circumstances just six months later.

“When I speak to voters, they say ‘he tried’,” they understand he struggled,” says Miss Tsefala, admitting that Greek voters – of whatever party – are now weary of wild promises. “They have heard enough big promises, now they want just small steps to improve lives.”

Mr Tsipras now derides his former Syriza colleagues and their breakaway Popular Unity party as “selfish” and leading Greece down a “dead-end”, pledging rather to implement the EU bailout while protecting Greece’s workers and poor and winning debt relief for Greece.

The alternative to a now-chastened Mr Tsipras is the return of the establishment New Democracy conservative party that voters rejected in 2015 after two years of trying to implement a previous EU economic reform plan.

Vangelis Meimarakis, the party’s 61-year-old leader and a former Greek defence minister has presented himself as the common-sense cure for Greece’s problems who will put an end to “Syriza's dangerous experiment”.

Whether Greek voters are ready to return to an establishment party still widely associated with the corruption and clientelism that caused Greece’s economic woes remains unclear, with polls showing both parties within the 2 per cent margin of error.

If he wins, Mr Meimarakis has promised to try and form a “grand coalition” with Syriza, yoking together left and right into a common compact to implement the reforms, but that proposal has already been rejected by Mr Tsipras.

Instead, if Mr Tsipras comes first, he is likely to try and form a government with small parties like the once-dominant socialist PASOK and a new centrist party, To Potami (The River).

Whatever the result on Sunday, both main parties have ruled out a coalition with Golden Dawn, the far-Right party that is expected to win some 6 per cent of the vote on the back of anti-austerity and anti-migrant sentiment.

The result, which is expected by 8pm UK time on Sunday, is likely to hang on how many disappointed Syriza voters turn out for Mr Tsipras, according to Marco Vicenzino, a Greece expert at the Global Strategy Project, a risk consultancy.

“The unpredictable element of the election is the 8 to 10 per cent of undecided voters who are mostly from the Left and voted Syriza but are now disillusioned. They won’t vote for the Right, but they may also not vote at all - that will help Meimarakis,” he said, “It is impossible to call.”