Capitulation leaves Tsipras unscathed

"He is the age of my son! He was the only one who stood against those monsters in Europe, look how tired he looks; he does not smile any longer. You will see; he will be a national leader. We have not had any for many, many years! " 

Such an emotional outburst would not have surprised me if it had taken place in Greece these days. But it came from a Rum lady (a Greek-Orthodox Turkish citizen) whom I visited in one of the Princess Islands last weekend. She and her husband were among the last Rums who left Istanbul for a new life in Athens in the mid-eighties, yet rushed back to their homeland when close to retirement, after the crisis broke out in Greece in 2010. Since then, life on the Princess Islands is much nicer than in their small flat in Athens, and the hard memories of their exit from Turkey by now have been put aside to make room for more immediate hardships.

I mention this lady's case for two reasons: first, because she is a Rum and a relatively recent resident in Greece, hence expected to have a distant look at Greek politics; and second, because she was a supporter of the conservative New Democracy Party, until she was enchanted by Tsipras.

But such an emotional support cannot possibly be justified solely by the performance of the Alexis Tsipras government, who took the reins of the country after five years of austerity. From the start, they lacked professionalism and willpower, and miscalculated the ruthlessness of their opponents both at home and in Europe. They failed to prepare the public for the worst case scenario, a Grexit, and did not know what to do if it ever came. So when the last card, the Grexit one, was shown by the Europeans, Tsipras had to surrender to a humiliating compromise that will put his country into...