The absence of Tsipras is the government’s biggest problem

“The biggest problem for Kyriakos Mitsotakis at the moment is that there is no Alexis Tsipras in front of him”, – says the well-known Greek journalist Lefteris T. Charalambopoulos. We substantiate our point of view in this publication.

“If anything is the biggest problem for Kyriakos Mitsotakis at the moment, it’s that he doesn’t have Alexis Tsipras in front of him. In other words, he does not have a politician with whom he is used to conflict for almost 8 years. Without Tsipras, the Prime Minister, in fact, has no one to discuss and conflict with.

And this is a real political problem for the prime minister and the government. Because it will be difficult for him to navigate. I’m not writing this out of some weirdness. I know “common sense” says you’re stronger when you don’t have an opponent.

I also understand that, at least on the surface, the government of Kyriakos Mitsotakis and the ND is in the happiest situation imaginable. This is because not only has it been re-elected, but it has maintained such a large distance from the opposition that for a while it appears to be politically unshakable.

Never before in Greece has there been such a large electoral gap between the first two parties. The difference, which if elections were held now, would be even greater if we look at the somewhat disintegrating phenomena that are already being recorded in SYRIZA in its search for a way forward the next day.

Moreover, while governments have traditionally been under pressure from opposing ideological forces, i.e. right and center-right forces from the left and center-left forces, and vice versa, here the government is probably under more pressure from the right, and this element can even be seen as strengthening its position.

Only I want to insist that this whole situation is actually a nuisance for the government, a factor that causes embarrassment and even anxiety. Because governments are always “set” to respond to political criticism and political opposition.

In other words, they are accustomed to reacting to the opposition, telling it: “You would have done worse” or “We saw how you did it”, creating enemies and opponents, attributing criticism of the opposition to “ideological obsessions”, engaging in mutual accusations.

Now it’s gone. The opposition is weakened and sometimes does not have even elementary reflexes to position itself in relation to government decisions and initiatives. This does not mean that the government is not criticized for its activities and policies. But it is exposed to it from the side of society, with all the contradictions that follow from this.

Obviously, governments are also in “dialogue” with (or even in conflict with) society. But to a large extent this is because social dynamics are politically mediated. That is, they are transformed into oppositional discourse, into polling figures, into opposite political initiatives. Otherwise, it is not certain that the government can really react or respond to what dominates society. It follows that it may prefer, for example, to address concerns from the “right” rather than the “left.”

However, when social dynamics remain “untranslated” into political language and unrepresented by the opposition, they run the risk of either not taking on a formatted form or taking on a form of accumulation of energy that could lead to a social explosion.

And again, if there is no political mediation, then it is not certain that anger or indignation will have an effect. For there is no mechanism to make social dynamics the agent of political change.

Politics by its very nature is a process that is both dialogical and confrontational, antagonistic. Governments without opposition are, whether they want to admit it or not, governments without a compass.”

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