Debt restructuring crucial for Tsipras' survival

"Just before the dawn is the deepest darkness," said the leader of the Greek leftist party of Syriza, Alexis Tsipras, in his final speech on the closing day of his party's second conference on Oct. 16. 

The 42-year-old leader of a small protest movement that rapidly grew during Greece's deepest economic crisis to become a mainstream party and win the last two elections was visibly frustrated. Speaking to a packed audience of party members and visitors - including a co-leader of Turkey's Peoples' Democratic Party - he warned that the next three months would be "the toughest" as the "war is raging inside and outside the country."

Greece is at the center of a difficult point, he said. "They all know, inside and outside, that a new dawn is about to rise for the Greek economy and Greek society," he said, noting that this was the result of the policies of his government. "We are all deeply aware of the situation. We do not fly in the sky because we know the difficulties and restrictions. We took difficult decisions consciously and we have one choice now: to work hard and decisively with a plan to get our country out of the trusteeship and the vicious circle of the debt crisis, recession and austerity," he announced from the podium of an indoor sports hall in the south of Athens.

Three months before its second anniversary, the leftist Syriza-Anel government has already amassed enough political enemies to feel uneasy. Society is suffering under a new set of austerity measures. Greeks whose income has been drastically reduced by heavy taxation and reduced salaries may search for political alternatives. The opposition is getting ready for a possible early general election. For the opposition, Tsipras gets the biggest share of the blame: he is seen as...