A To Potami rally in Athens. Demotix/Nicolas Koutsokostas. All rights reserved.In the coming election of September 20, I am standing as a candidate for To Potami, the pro-European centre-left party formed in 2014 by journalist Stavros Theodorakis. To Potami - which means 'The River' in Greek - was formed with a twin agenda, first to fight the corruption and cronyism of the traditional parties of government, Pasok and New Democracy, and, second, to defend the future of Greece inside the Eurozone against isolationist calls by strong forces of nationalism and populism.
The seven months tenure of the Tsipras coalition government of extreme Left and extreme Right parties (Syriza and Independent Greeks) has changed nothing in Potami's core objectives. The Tsipras government that has just resigned committed in its short life all of the errors of the old parties, together with some extraordinary errors of its own.
The Tsipras government - like its predecessors - made many statements on corruption but took no real measures to fight it. It did not start the process of constitutional reform, or of electoral reform or justice reform as it had promised. Moreover, it opposed the 'minimum guaranteed income' for the poorest, as advocated by the EU and the IMF, a measure which would have removed overnight the 'insurance' rationale of clientelism - since Greece remains one of the most unequal and the only country in the EU without income support for the poor (and 90% of the unemployed receive no help from the state).
