What if Greece's Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras willfully sought to cave in to Greece's creditors?
However extravagant it appears at first read, this hypothesis is the only one that can give coherence to a chain of otherwise disparate, contradictory decisions taken by Athens - decisions that brought the Greek economy to the brink of paralysis.
On June 26, Tsipras refused to stamp his signature on a program of reforms negotiated with Greece's official creditors that seemed to be a done deal. He then convened a referendum (held on July 5) and called upon his fellow citizens to reject those reforms by voting no. Yet, when the no vote won, he switched tack and put forward to Greece's creditors proposals which largely mirrored those that Greeks, upon his recommendation, had voted against. Finally, on July 13 he accepted a still-harsher set of reforms that Greece's eurozone partners had presented him as a take-it-or-leave-it offer.
All these prevarications have nurtured the belief that Greece's prime minister awkwardly misplayed his cards - that perhaps he didn't even know what cards he held.
Looked at more carefully, however, Tsipras's brinkmanship may have responded to, and succeeded in securing, a different, somewhat hidden objective, namely: to loosen the grip that his radical-left party, Syriza, held on his government and on himself and, by that token, to be in a position to come to terms with his country's creditors despite the efforts of Syriza hardliners.
To ascertain how stifling Syriza's hold on the Greek government had become, it is worthwhile to recall the circumstances under which the June 26 meeting between Tsipras and the three institutions that represent Greece's creditors (the European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund) ended in deadlock.
On that occasion, after several hours of intense negotiations, and at a moment when Tsipras appeared ready to accept a set of proposals made by the creditors, he - as reported by the Financial Times - left the room to consult with the advisers from his party who had come with him to Brussels. A few minutes later Tsipras came back with new proposals and modifications to the painfully-negotiated text.
Exasperated by this last-minute pirouette, the heads of the creditors' institutions decided to call off the meeting.
Once back in Greece, Tsipras broadcast his decision to convene a referendum on the proposals put forward by the institutions, and immediately took the side in favor of the no vote.
Tsipras' last-minute turnaround at the June 26 meeting in Brussels could only be explained by pressures from the party advisers standing outside the negotiations room. After consulting them, he fretted about being disavowed by his party should he give a formal go-ahead to that reform package.
At that point, Tsipras must have realized that the only way to secure a meaningful negotiating space for himself was to emancipate himself from party control. This was all the more necessary since he knew, after six months in government, that persistence in the standoff with Greece's creditors - which Syriza's hardliners and his finance minister at the time, Yanis Varoufakis, were advocating - would only lead to Greece's economic collapse.
Indeed, the confrontational stance taken to that point had shackled Greece with uncertainties and financial constraints that were at the source of the country's shrinking tax receipts, bank runs, liquidity shortages and capital controls.
For Tsipras, therefore, it was urgent to change tack.
But then, how to attain that goal? Would he dare propose reforms that would contradict his electoral promises? No way; his party was strong enough to stop him from turning about.
Tsipras had only one workable option: to give the impression that a change of course had become unavoidable, even though he himself was against it - hence his leading the no camp at the July 5 referendum.
That referendum, and the victory of the no vote, considerably enhanced Tsipras's public image. From then on, he was not merely the leading candidate that Syriza had successfully presented at the January Parliamentary elections - obtaining 36.5 percent of the votes. He was now the prime minister who had thrown his political weight behind the no camp and earned the support of 61.5 percent of his fellow citizens.
After that political victory, Tsipras was in a position to make his own decisions - his political party no longer held him on a leash. It was then, and not before, that he could depart from Syriza's hardline stances and propose, as he actually did, reforms almost identical to those he had been pushed to refuse in the June 26 meeting with creditors.
True, when he arrived in Brussels to attend the July 12 eurozone summit, Tsipras was not expecting to be confronted with a still harsher reform package. All the same, he was already set to compromise - as evidenced by the concessions he brought with him.
Thus, once in Brussels, and realizing that his eurozone partners were in no mood to backtrack, Tsipras preferred to capitulate rather than to walk away one more time. He argued afterward, during an interview on Greek state television, that he had signed a text he didn't believe in, only "to avoid a disaster for the country."
The gambit paid off: Seventy-two percent of Greeks deemed that the Brussels agreement was necessary.
Distinct proof that capitulation was a matter of choice, rather than of necessity, lies in the fact that Tsipras's former Finance Minister, Yanis Varoufakis, had prepared a secret plan B, involving the creation of a parallel payments scheme aimed at coping with Greece's eventual exit from the euro. Tsipras, however, preferred to appease Greece's creditors and asked Varoufakis to step down.
By disentangling himself from Syriza hardliners and from his former finance minister, Alexis Tsipras has managed to become Greece's indispensable player. As showed by his sparkling 60 percent approval rating, a majority of Greeks have come to believe that no one could represent and defend their interests more forcefully and effectively than Tsipras. Greece's creditors, for their part, will hardly find someone better suited than Tsipras to persuade that country's population and bureaucracy, albeit grudgingly, of the need to undertake profound economic and institutional reforms.
It remains to be seen whether Tsipras can deliver the reforms that Greece so badly needs.
(AP photo)
