Venizelos: Tsipras is like Harry Potter but we will work with him if we have to

In an interview to Italian paper La Stampa (link in Italian) this week, the Pasok president  likened Syriza leader Alexis Tsipras to Harry Potter, but insisted he wants to work with all progressive parties that share the country’s European perspective, including the anti-bailout party.

Evangelos Venizelos added that ‘there is no danger of a Grexit, no one can throw us out of the euro” and slammed foreign media reports and statements by European politicians, that have raised the possibility of Greece leaving the eurozone, as ‘irresponsible”.

“This not only damages Europe but the euro as well,” he said.

Venizelos also said that the rise of anti-bailout Syriza rise was linked to voter anger and to the fact that it had never governed.

“The radical Syriza party which once had  4% of the vote represented a large percentage of voter anger,” he said, adding that “Tsipras was promising a paradise on earth without sacrifices and the return to past prosperity in a magical way, just like Harry Potter.”

But Syriza, he said, had a trump card:

“It had never governed and it was not responsible for the crisis”.
“The party wasn’t identified with the crisis itself but with the causes that led to the crisis,” he said.

Venizelos said that the situation Greece finds itself dictates the need for a strong government of national unity comprising all the country’s forces – preferably progressive – that believe in democracy (barring the neonazi Golden Dawn party) and Greece’s European orientation as a member of the EU and the Eurozone.

“It is something we need more than we did three years ago,” he said referring to general elections in 2012.

“The only red line for us is the respect of the will of the overwhelming majority of the Greek people to remain in the eurozone and the European Union,” he said.

“We will support the next Greek coalition government on the grounds it doesn’t create dangers to Greece and Europe’s future and follows the only feasible path: A plan for Greece’s exit from the crisis in cooperation with the country’s partners.”

Venizelos stressed that it is vital for the party that wins the election to form alliances with other parties in order to avoid a second election which ‘would be a disaster’.

Syriza, which is campaigning on an anti-austerity platform, has insisted from the outset that Greece’s debt is unsustainable, but Venizelos, a former finance minister, begged to differ.  

“From a technical side, the debt is sustainable, we pay 40% less interest compared to 2010,” he said, adding that this is the point where Pasok and Syriza differ.

“Syriza claims the debt is unsustainable because our country would never be in a position to pay it all off…but no country pays off all of its debt and in Greece’s case 90% of its debt is owned by other countries and  institutions, so it is in safe hands”.

Centre-left Pasok which was once the dominant political party in Greece for almost three decades has seen its popularity drop dramatically since it signed Greece’s first bailout agreement in 2010.

Its reputation was further dented when it became a junior partner in the coalition government formed in 2012 with its conservative rivals New Democracy and came to be dismissed by large swathes of the electorate and former voters as ‘sellouts’,identified  with the harsh austerity imposed by the country’s lenders.

Recent polls suggest that Pasok would receive 4.5% of the vote with Syriza getting 33.5%,  extending its lead over ruling New Democracy to 6.5 points.

Venizelos said that when Pasok swept back to power in 2009, after five years of a New Democracy government under Costas Karamanlis, it had not realised the ‘huge volume of dangers’ in store before the country’s financial crisis erupted in 2010.

“For the first time in its history, our party was forced to cut pensions and wages etc..then the first bailout plan came, the memorandum,” he said.

“Voters never forgave us for that.”

Venizelos,  a professor of Constitutional Law, was elected unopposed to replace George Papandreou as PASOK president and led the party in the May 2012 general election as well as the June 2012 general election.