‘Alexi,’ I said, trying to sound as nonchalant as I could, ‘I hear Dragasakis is too close to bankers. And, generally, that he may be going along with our escape plans while in reality he is working to maintain the status quo.’
He did not answer right away. Instead he looked towards the Peloponnese in the distance, before turning back to me. ‘No, I do not think so. He is OK.’
I did not know what to make of his brevity. Did he harbour doubts too but on balance trusted in his senior comrade’s probity or was he dismissing my question? To this day I do not know the answer. What I do know is that he kept insisting I had no choice: when the moment came, I had to play a leading role in the negotiations.
Loath to list my reservations once more, I replied spontaneously, ‘OK, Alexi, you can count on my help. But on one condition.’
‘Which one?’ he asked with a smile.
‘That I have a major say in Syriza’s economic agenda prior to the election. We cannot have a repeat of 2012.’
Alexis promised he would have Pappas keep me in the loop and consult with me before they put anything out on economic policy. It was time to swim back to Alexis’s partner Betty and Danae, who were waiting on a small inflatable tenuously anchored to the seabed.
Blood, sweat and tears
A month later, back in Austin, I heard on the news that Alexis had delivered a major speech in Thessaloniki outlining Syriza’s economic platform. Gobsmacked, I got hold of the text and read it. A wave of nausea and indignation permeated my gut. Straight away I went to work. The article that emerged less than half an hour later was used soon after its publication by Prime Minister Samaras to lambast Syriza in parliament: ‘Even Varoufakis, your economic guru, says that your promises are fake.’ And so they were.
The Thessaloniki Programme, as Alexis’s speech was labelled, was well meaning but incoherent and definitely inconsistent with the Five-Pronged Strategy, which Alexis and Pappas had supposedly endorsed. It promised wage rises, subsidies, benefits and investment paid for with sources of funding which were either imaginary or illegal. There were also promises we should not have wanted to fulfil. Above all, it was at odds with any reasonable negotiating strategy that kept Greece within the eurozone, despite advocating that it should remain there. It was in fact such a ramshackle programme that I did not even bother to criticize it point by point. Instead I wrote:
How I would have loved a different speech from Alexis Tsipras, one beginning with the question ‘Why vote for us?’ before proceeding to answer it with ‘Because we are promising you only three things: blood, sweat and tears!’
Blood, sweat and tears, which Winston Churchill promised the British people in 1940 as he was assuming the helm of government, in return for their support and help to win the war.
Blood, sweat and tears, which will earn all Europeans, not just us Greeks, the right to hope for an end to the muted but ruthless war against dignity and truth.
Blood, sweat and tears, which we should be ready to shed to put the country back on track, something that today is impossible if we continue to behave like model prisoners hoping for early release from debtors’ prison and to borrow more while cutting the incomes from which we must meet our repayments.
Indeed, if you want to vote for us, you must do so only because you agree that the blood, sweat and tears that we are promising you are a fair price to pay to hear the truth from the lips of government ministers and to have representatives in Europe who will neither beg nor bluff but instead adopt a strategy no government has hitherto adopted, the strategy of speaking
Truth to power.
Truth to our partners.
Truth to the citizens of Europe.
Truth regarding the sorry state of our banks.
Truth about our ‘surpluses’.
Truth about non-existent investment.
And finally, the most painful, Truth about the zero prospects for recovery while the death embrace continues between a bankrupt state, bankrupt banks, bankrupt firms and bankrupt institutions.
Lastly, before you vote for us, know that we dread an electoral victory more than we fear defeat, that we are scared stiff at the thought we may win. But if you decide to vote us in to deliver the blood, sweat and tears we are promising in exchange for truth and dignity, if you overcome your fear, then we promise to overcome our fear to govern this country and to steer it to emancipation from hopelessness.1
On its publication, friends and foes alike thought this marked the end of my brief affair with Syriza’s leadership. I thought so too until Pappas called a few days later, sounding chipper and as if nothing had happened. I put it to him that my article changed everything.
‘It changes nothing,’ he retorted light-heartedly. ‘You will get to shape the actual economic programme. The Thessaloniki Programme was a rallying call for our troops. That’s all.’
Exasperated, I gave him a piece of my mind, stressing that the support of our troops was essential and lying to them was hardly the way to ensure it. Unabashed, he assured me ominously, ‘There is party policy and there is government policy. You will author the latter and leave the former to us.’
I asked who was behind the Thessaloniki Programme. Pappas said Dragasakis had overseen it, assisted by Euclid. Dragasakis’s hand did not surprise me but Euclid’s involvement was disappointing. I expected more from my friend. ‘Whoever wrote that monstrosity,’ I said, ‘it throws a spanner into any sensible negotiating strategy.’
I put the phone down with a mouth so dry and bitter I had to drink several glasses of water before talking things over with Danae. The leadership were telling each other one story while the party faithful were being served a completely different one. It was a recipe for confusion, division and defeat against adversaries who were united, mighty and determined. The narrative we gave our people and the troika officials, the EU and IMF leadership, Berlin and Washington, indeed the international press and the markets, should be one, indivisible, credible, unbending message. Upon hearing my view that Pappas and Alexis’s tactics were bound to wreck any future negotiation, Danae reacted sharply: ‘You cannot be part of this.’
I agreed.
The decision to keep my distance brought instant relief, but my peace of mind lasted only a couple of months. In late November 2014, as I was preparing to fly to Florence to address a conference, the call came once again. It was Pappas. When he discovered I was on my way to Italy he implored me to make a side trip to Athens before returning to Austin. ‘It is urgent that you come,’ he said. Reluctantly I changed my ticket.
In Florence I addressed a gathering of worried Italian officials, bankers and academics, presenting a newer version of the Modest Proposal, a set of policies that could be implemented instantly within Europe’s existing rules to stop the euro crisis in its tracks everywhere, not just in Italy or Greece.2 The next morning I caught the train to Rome and from there the short flight to Athens, wondering along the way what Alexis and Pappas had in store for me. The newspapers at the airport were abuzz with rumours of an early election. Had my Syriza friends absorbed the message in my article?
The taxi dropped me off at our empty flat. I dumped my suitcase and was pleasantly surprised at my motorcycle’s willingness to start despite three months of idleness. A quarter of an hour later I was parking it under Alexis’s apartment block, where I was greeted by two sentries at street level. The lift took me to the top floor, where Alexis, Betty and their two delightful young boys live. Pappas and Dragasakis were there too. It was early in the evening.
It wasn’t until the early hours of the following morning that I finally emerged, drove back to our flat to collect my suitcase and caught a taxi to the airport for my flight to Austin.
‘What happened?’ asked Danae on the phone.
‘I’ll tell you when I see you,’ I replied. Holding my tongue on the phone for fear of eavesdroppers had begun.
A full and frank exchange
The mood in Alexis and Betty’s apartment had been cheerful. Samaras’s government had plummeted in the polls, elections now looked imminent, and they wanted to discuss strategy in the event of Syriza’s now probable victory.
I was not in the mood to share their excitement. The Thessaloniki Programme had heightened my fears that Alexis was about to waste what might well be our generation’s last chance to get Greece out of its prison of debt, so I made a point of emphasizing the hardships and risks ahead, reiterating the points I had tried to impress upon them at our meeting in June. It was all well and good to pray for the ‘good scenario’ that Dragasakis liked to invoke, but we urgently needed to prepare for a more probable, and far nastier, one.
‘Let me tell you what I think you will face on day one of your administration,’ I began once we had all settled down in the living room. ‘Expect a bank run to begin the Monday after your election.’3
Rumours that the ECB might close the banks would cause depositors to withdraw their euros to store under their mattresses or wire abroad, I explained, just as had happened in 2012 and in Cyprus the following year. EU and IMF officials would be in no hurry to negotiate with a government they wanted to undermine. They would sit on their hands, bide their time and wait for Alexis and his team to come face to face with the first of the impossible repayments to the IMF and the ECB due from March 2015 onwards.4 As we had discussed in June, a Syriza government therefore had to be prepared to signal from the very beginning that if the EU and IMF refused to negotiate in good faith it would simply not make those repayments. If that happened, the EU and IMF would undoubtedly respond that the ECB was no longer able to provide liquidity to the Greek banks, as their IOUs were backed by a government in default, a threat tantamount to switching off their emergency liquidity assistance, thus shutting them down.
