As of last Sunday we have entered a new era. The people gave Mr. Tsipras the first place in the elections, but they deprived him of a parliamentary majority.
This forced him to form a coalition with Mr. Kammenos, who was his closest ally during the years of the anti-bailout opposition.
The result was the formation of a government comprised of leftists and nationalist populist ministers. This government is innovative with a structure and hierarchy that will coordination and control.
The government is being led by the Prime Minister, coordinated by a15-member government council, the government Vice President has the special mission of supervising the financial sector, while the Prime Minister has by him people he can trust with special missions for the media, information, corruption, interests and anything else that can pose a threat to the government. All this make up a powerful center of power and authority, with all that this entails.
At the same time though on can notice that this formation has smaller, no-so-insignificant power centers.
Mr. Lafazanis’ Ministry of Productive Reconstruction is one of the more important ones, giver the scale of its jurisdiction and powers; more so if one takes into consideration Mr. Lafazanis’ beliefs and the intensity of his speeches.
Mr. Kammenos who has been assigned the sensitive area of national defense has also established his own power center. Beliefs and perceptions are important over here.
It is quite interesting to combine it with the power center around the Ministry of Foreign Affairs – which is defined by Mr. Nikos Kotzias’ beliefs. Mr. Kammenos and Mr. Kotzias may have a great ideological and political distance, but they are an explosive duo.
Mr. Varoufakis is a power center on his own. As the new government’s “rock star”, he has already drawn the attention on him, due to how comfortable he is in taking on the negotiation challenge. He will often stress that “everything will be over in 15 days”. For time being though, the messages from Brussels are anything but optimistic, instead that are filled with suspicion and concern over the future.
From then on, one cannot ignore the prospect of electing Zoi Konstantopoulou as President of Parliament.
Everyone realizes the change and passing on into a different era. They have come to terms with it, especially when they have heard moderate speeches from the newly-elected Prime Minister.
However the individual choices and firs comments of the new Ministers create an atmosphere of conflict, before the negotiations with the partners has even begun.
At present there is no guarantee that the negotiation will be successful and the country’s funding will be uninterrupted.
The previous experiences were not the best.
All previous governments that came into direct contact with the country’s financial problem and were overcome by the “militant begging syndrome” perished quickly.
It would be a shame for the same thing to happen to the Tsipras government, upon which the Greek people have invested so much after five year of torment.
Antonis Karakousis
