SYRIZA must come clean on reforms

 Given its roots, leftist party will have a hard time promoting structural changes if it leads the next gov?t

By Dimitris Kontogiannis

The pre-election campaigns of the two major political parties have been dominated by themes of a Greek exit from the eurozone ? austerity and public debt ? but they are missing the most important one, at least from the official lenders? point of view: structural reforms. Without a commitment on these reforms, any new government will find it very difficult to reach an agreement with the troika on debt relief and an end to austerity. This may lead to a stalemate whose economic and political fallout is difficult to gauge at this point.

According to opinion polls and, most importantly in our view, the betting odds for the 2015 election, the leftist SYRIZA party is the favorite to win. Still, the election outcome should not be taken for granted since SYRIZA?s lead over the conservative New Democracy party has been cut to within the sampling error according to some polls in the last week or so and there are many undecided voters. So far, the campaign has been dominated by economic topics while Premier Antonis Samaras recently introduced the theme of illegal immigration in a bid to appeal to right-wing voters lured by Golden Dawn and the Independent Greeks party.

After five years in an austerity program, accounting for fiscal measures of more than 60 billion euros, or 30 percent of GDP, which is unprecedented by international standards in developed countries, many Greeks are simply fed up with it. As a result, they are willing to vote for a leftist party which promises to end austerity, increase social spending and tax the rich in a country where the vast majority of the population earns an annual income of 35,000...