By Andi Bushati/ The defeat of Tsipras, as an anti-model for Albin Kurti

2023-06-27 18:33:00, Opinione Andi Bushati

By Andi Bushati/ The defeat of Tsipras, as an anti-model for Albin Kurti

Andi Bushati, journalist

The Greek election marathon ended last Sunday with a clear victory for Prime Minister Mitsotaqis and an unstoppable decline of the left of Alexis Tsipras. If compared to the electoral race of May 21, New Democracy increased its result by nearly 50 deputies (158 out of 300 that the Greek parliament has), Syriza decreased within 5 weeks by more than 2 points, going down to 17%.

This unstoppable fall of the surprise prime minister of 2015-2019, who frightened and shocked the European political scene by rising to power as a radical force offering solutions quite opposite to those of Brussels, the IMF and the World Bank regarding the Greek crisis, requires an explanation. It doesn't only appeal to leftists or admirers, but it arouses interest because, in a way, it is a premature scenario of what is happening here on our side.

Alexis Tsipras

Often in political salons, or by those who love simplistic comparisons, Alexis Tsipras has been compared to Albin Kurti in Kosovo. Both leftists, for some radicals, for others in the extreme, both founders of anti-system parties, both with an obvious incompatibility with the financial oligarchy, both sovereignists and both with an obvious distrust of ready-made recipes, often horrendous, which the internationalists arrogantly suggest.

Between the two, the Greek radical left was the first to experience power. Taking advantage of the human and social catastrophe caused by the debt tragedy, as well as the disastrous management that the two traditional parties, with the inhuman recommendations of the troika, did to the crisis, he arrived in 2019 at the post of prime minister, rising above the ruins of the social left Democrats of PASOK.

He won thanks to an ambitious program that did not accept the cynical idea that the cost of quickly repaying the debt to the international banks should fall mercilessly on the most vulnerable Greeks, he managed to convince by opposing the prescriptions of technocrats who insisted on solutions of them even when they caused great human dramas on the ground.

Albin Kurti

The question is, will Albin Kurti bow before them in the name of a momentary solidarity with the Western allies, sacrificing the eternal interests of the state? Is he ready, in the face of pressure, like Tsipras, to make concessions for which he did not receive a mandate from the voters?

This question still remains open. But unlike his leftist Greek predecessor, the Prime Minister of Kosovo, he already has an example. The 180-degree pirouette, the betrayal of his electoral base, the transformation into a cog of the system, the prevailing of the conjuncture over democracy, almost fatally punished Alexis Tsipras. Faced with a man who behaves differently than he claims, people are inclined to choose the original, even worse. This is precisely why what happened on Sunday in Athens is important from our side as well. In a way, she obligingly defines Kurt's path.