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Anastasia Balezdrova

Antypas Karipoglou is the new chairman of Drassi, following the resignation of its founder Stefanos Manos. In an interview for GRReporter he analyzed the election results, criticized the radical Left and said that what divides Greek society is the desire for change and the persistence of the supporters of the old and vicious pattern.

Mr. Karipoglоu how do you explain the election results?

After the first elections, the attempts to form a government failed because New Democracy and PASOK had a big decrease in electoral percentage. The explanation for this is that on 6 May people voted more guided by anger and frustration with the situation in the country and i8n this way they punished the two ruling parties.

I don't think that the outcome of the second elections on 17 June is representative of the actual political situation in the country. Many voters, from both political spaces, voted without being supporters of specific parties. For example, New Democracy achieved a 10 per cent increase, which came from people who were afraid of the possibility of the country's government passing into the hands of SYRIZA. On the other hand, the radical Left was also supported by people who wanted to remove the memorandum and believed that only this party was able to do it. This way SYRIZA received the votes of traditional voters of the Communist Party, PASOK and, as a whole, of various opponents of the memorandum.

What matters is that today we have a government with broad parliamentary support, and it represents the majority of pro-European voters. At least in words. They want Greece to stay in the eurozone and the European Union, and we are all expecting to see what the government will do. At the level of statements, a lot of the things are good and we agree with them. We support the government because the country isn't able to cope with the situation, which will follow if this cabinet fails. This will lead to Greece's exit from the eurozone and what worries me the most is that this cannot happen without leaving the European structures as well.

How long do you think the governing coalition will last?

Theoretically, and according to the constitution, the coalition should govern until 2016. Whether or not it is able to deal with the basic problem, which allows no delay, will soon become clear, simply because the problems must be solved immediately. Greece is threatened by bankruptcy in about a month, and the danger is very real, ff the government fails to address several key issue.

On the other hand change of governments happens not only by elections. It is also possible for the Parliament itself to change the government, as happened a few months ago with PASOK's government and the setting up of Lucas Papadimos's cabinet.

It is very difficult to predict anything at all. The most important thing is how we will manage to solve the problem by the end of the year, because now it is very serious. Either the government will do what is needed to put things in the proper order, or it will suffer such a great setback, which I don't think any government can withstand. I mean, if the country goes bankrupt social peace and even democracy will be threatened. I don't mean changes in state administration, the country simply won't be able to function, if every day the streets are full of protesters, some of whom cause massive unrest and violence. I think if the country goes bankrupt, there is no way to avoid this.

According to analysts, no matter which of the two scenarios prevails, Alexis Tsipras will be the next Greek Prime Minister. What is your opinion?

As I have already said, it is very difficult to predict anything, but this is probably true. If this government fails, we believe this will be a failure of the policy, widely called "policy of the memorandum". We think that the only appropriate policy is this: reforms, profound changes, major cuts in government spending, a drastic reduction of the public sector. These all are things which the government isn't doing. I.e., in theory we have a memorandum, but we don't meet our obligations according to it, people are struggling in their daily lives and because they do not see any hope on the horizon, they declare themselves against the memorandum. For example, today it was announced that there will be a new cut in pensions, which was not foreseen either by the first memorandum or by the Medium term. The government is doing it, because it hasn't made a single reform.

The majority of people, however, doesn't see things this way. They will say that the country is applying the policy of the memorandum. And if it drives us to bankruptcy, to the need to leave the eurozone, or at least to more difficult economic conditions and to a further reduction in living standards, this will automatically mean that Alexis Tsipras and SYRIZA have been right.

At present, the radical left has the great advantage of the fact that its proposal was not implemented in practice. If people become disappointed by what they are seeing now, they will be ill disposed towards all who support the "memorandum policy" and will support a proposal such as: "we will blackmail Europeans, we will return to the drachma" and other similar things.

Therefore it is very important for us for the government to succeed and to create a united front with which to oppose to SYRIZA. Otherwise, this party will grow even further. Not with people who support it ideologically, but with all the angry and dissatisfied citizens.

In which part of the political centre is Drasi and what distinguishes it from other parties?

I would not say that Drasi should be necessarily considered as part of the centre-right space. Our party is reformist, above all. We created it in 2009 with preciesly this request: that major reforms to be carried out, at a time when most people didn't see the country's problems.

Many of us, including Stefanos Manos, are right centrists. But ever since the founding of the party, left centrists have been participating in it as well. People who are interested in the environment and others who are interested in realism and the essence of things. So I would define Drassi as a "new centre" or reformist party.

The most important thing for us is that the elections provided us the opportunity to spread throughout the country. So far we have been an "Athenian" party. The explanation for this is that everybody knew mainly Stefanos Manos, whose political activity has always been associated with the capital city and the central political arena. So far, we have participated twice in the European Parliament elections, but these are "easy" elections, which do not require to have candidates at a local level. It was therefore much more logical for the party to be strong in Athens. If we had the same success in the country we would have won 4 per cent of the votes. We just didn't have presence in the province, while in the large urban centres we received the highest number of votes. The elections have helped us in this regard. We already have representatives throughout the country, they are becoming well-known in their regions and we hope that this will have a good influence in the future.

You said that an opposing political formation should be created. The centre-right political space in Greece is in a crisis. Before the elections there was an attempt a front to be created, which, however, wasn't successful. Do you think the centre-right forces are able to achieve such an ally?

Before the election we decided to enter into coalition with other political formations, similar to us. It was the Democratic Alliance of Dora Bakoyannis - a liberal party, which declared itself openly pro reforms. We have had many opportunities to achieve a union because a lot of things connected us, but in the end we didn’t manage to carry cooperation into effect.

The other option for a coalition was with the party "ReCreate Greece", which was new and we didn't know what exactly it was like. Communication was not easy, but eventually we managed to enter into coalition.

Of course, another partner was the Liberal Alliance, which is a smaller but more politicized party. We managed to enter into coalition with them, we participated together in the elections and we are still closely related.

I do not think, however, that the elections were a problem of the centre-right. As I have already said, voters did not vote with a political criterion. There were many traditional supporters of New Democracy, who voted for SYRIZA. As well as leftists who voted for New Democracy so that SYRIZA would not win, because they feared that the irresponsible position of the radical left would cause Greece's exit from the eurozone.

Anyway, I do not think the problem in Greece is ideological. There are many people from all political spaces, who realize that reforms have to be made. There are others who want the situation from several years ago to be preserved and maybe they don't understand that this isn't possible because there are no resources for this. In my opinion, this is the great division in Greek society.

Despite the expectations your party coalition with "ReCreate Greece" in the second elections failed to enter the Parliament. What do you think this failure is due to?

Look, the sum of the results from the first elections was simple: Together with "ReCreate Greece" we would have reached 4 per cent. But the polarization between New Democracy and SYRIZA was very strong. From the very beginning we knew that many of our supporters were determined to vote for New Democracy, without this meaning that they were getting away from us. They lent their vote to New Democracy, for the sole purpose of SYRIZA not to win.

In addition, cooperation wasn't smooth, but gradually we overcame problems. It turned out that in this new party, there are many and different opinions. Some of its participants fully supported our position, while others had serious reservations. Some were simply attracted by the slogan "politics without politicians", which I do not understand. Because from the very moment Thanos Dzimeros entered the elections and won 2.15 per cent of the votes, he started being considered a politician.

We regret the cooperation in no case, although we found differences on many issues: immigration, human rights and others. However, it was in the right direction because we managed to keep alive a small, but reformist centrist space, where there is also the largest gap in Greek politics, which is now moving from one extreme to the other.

To which social circle do Darsi's supporters belong?

I can not say exactly, because their number is not large, and we haven't had the ability to fund more extensive research in this direction. The election results indicate, however, that support is higher among the better educated and those with good financial standing, as well as among young people. Older and retired people are the smallest part of our voters. Generally, I would say that our supporters come mainly from the bourgeois part of society.

This is not very good for us. Both because it separates us from part of voters, and because the legend that we are an elitist party became famous, although we are not. Another myth is that the party is neoliberal, which is not true. A victim of this "labelling" is Stefanos Manos himself, who sees himself as a neoliberal, because he says things like "we have to cut costs" or "we need to reduce staff in the public sector" in a direct manner. To me, this is a "leftist" decision, because, if introduced, it will help the poorer. At the moment, the private sector is being destroyed, while the public remains unaffected. And this is called "left and progressive politics" in Greece.

We have to change people's perception of Drassi. We have to convince them that our proposals are fair to all. For example, a cut for pensions is now being prepared. Even before the first one we stated that the measures shouldn't be equal for all. To cut 10 per cent of a 5,000 euro pension is not the same as to cut 10 per cent of a 500 euro pension. And there are quite a large number of high pensions even today. Also, none of the governments took on to analyze the way pensions are formed. Because it is one thing to receive a pension from the National Insurance Fund, where for 35-40 years you have contributed particularly high payments, but you don’t have any privileges such as early retirement, and another thing to receive a huge pension from the fund of the National Electricity Company for example, where government funding is 28,500 euro a year per person. Because nobody in the private sector has retired at an early age and no woman working in the private sector has benefited from large maternity leaves and hasn't been able to retire at 42 and 45 years. This was valid only for the public sector and state enterprises. But when you say this is not fair, thousands of voices rise up to oppose. I cannot understand what kind of Left party is a party, which continues to support such injustices.

On the other hand we must not forget also the system which violently defends these branch interests. Literally all governments fear GENOP-DEI trade union's leader Nikos Fotopoulos.

The big pledge for us is to find the way to explain these things to people, so that they would understand that our proposals are not terrible, but logical. Not in order for them to vote for us, but just to understand that it is not possible for there to be retirees who receive money from the state budget or others - with money from the so-called third-party taxes. This is another great paradox. I am a lawyer and I can tell you that our pensions are largely financed exactly by such taxes. I.e. for a transaction, which doesn't even require the presence of a lawyer, people are taxed for the benefit of our insurance fund. As a result, lawyers pay much lower contributions than a cleaning lady in the National Insurance Fund. Our pensions are not high, but this whole financing system is unfair.

The same applies to the insurance scheme for journalists. It is financed by the so-called advertisement tax ("aggeliosimo"), which is 21.5 per cent. This means that part of the money we give to buy a can of soft drink, for example, is given to the journalists' fund. Last year, I calculated that when you buy a small car, worth 10 - 12,000 euro, the value of the advertisement tax is more than 100 euro. All these taxes are not only unfair but also create problems in the economy, because they increase prices.

The entire system just needs to be rehabilitated. It is clear that pensions should be financed, because contributions are not sufficient to cover them. But first you need to finance people with lower pensions or to cut higher pensions first. The burden is currently born by the majority of the population, since pensions under 700 euros account for more than 70 per cent of the total, and the so-called "noble" pension funds remain unaffected. And the Left doesn’t even mention the pensions in the National Electricity Company. And who is now more leftist, leaving aside the "labels" of the past. But, I am saying again, we are also responsible for the fact that and we cannot make our proposals clear to people.

You are the new chairman of Drassi after the resignation of Stefanos Manos, who took responsibility for the election result. Will there be changes in the party or will you continue with this management team?

Stefanos Manos has a very successful political career behind him. With great efforts, he managed to create a centrist space. After failing to get into parliament, he resigned, but has not retired from politics. He is still an active member of the party.

In principle we, as a new leadership, were elected according to the statute and will have to remain until the next regular congress in February 2014.

But the events are so intensive that the Central Committee has decided to hold the Congress in October or November, at which more people will legitimize a new leadership. Moreover, Drassi wants to grow, although it is not necessary that we would be the only ones, new formations can occur as well. In all cases, the chairman is very important for the image of the party. Stefanos Manos gave Drassi a very specific aspect. After his resignation, the party is no longer centralized in one person. To avoid any misunderstandings, I want to emphasize that he has never been authoritarian, but when ten people, who are not known to the general public, are sitting together with Stefanos Manos at one table, people define the party as "the party of Manos." Now nobody calls Drassi "the party of Karipoglоu" and this is good. There is a chance that it will change.

This means that we have to learn to act more collectively. We hope new faces will come as well and that all together we can decide how to get to the next elections, and above all how to help improve the situation in the country.