New dawn in Greece

When Alexis Tsipras became Greece's youngest prime minister following the January 25 elections, one figure loomed larger than most over the newly elected leader: Andreas Papandreou, the socialist PASOK founder and arguably the most influential Greek prime minister following the fall of the dictatorship in 1974.

Like Tsipras, Papandreou was initially seen as a leader of the 'radical left' and was first elected on a populist platform promising to stand up to perceived western imperialism. Papandreou had opposed Greece's EU entry and pledged to remove NATO bases from the country. But when in power, Papandreou subsequently abandoned these and other more radical policies. Shifting to occupy the center-left of Greek politics, he came to dominate and shape political life in the country for well over a decade.

The question on the minds of many was: could Tsipras pull off a similar feat, albeit under very different circumstances?

In his seven months in power before his resignation last month, Tsipras certainly performed some whiplash inducing u-turns. He went from being an anti-austerity firebrand to the prime minister who signed a third Memorandum program with the European Commission pledging billions in additional austerity. The leftist leader, while certainly a break with past political dynasties, ultimately proved to be less than radical, willing to make major compromises in order to keep the country in the euro.

The Tsipras shift

And while Tsipras' shifts inevitably led to accusations of betrayal from some on the hard left (and triggered a split in Syriza), this narrative does not appear to be resonating with many of the Greeks who voted for the party in January's elections. The newly formed pro-drachma breakaway party Popular Unity, led by the former Syriza minister Panayiotis Lafazanis, is polling at only around 4-5 percent according to recent polls. And having his party purged of its more radical elements may make life easier for Tsipras moving forward.

"I don't trust anyone else to manage the country," Amalia Economou, 54, said at a recent Syriza rally in the working class neighborhood of Egaleo in western Athens. Economou, a public school guard who was laid off as part of broad austerity measures in 2013, has been participating in strident anti-memorandum rallies for several years. She was rehired in 2014 following a legal decision but says she will continue to battle austerity. "I am not satisfied [with the third bailout deal] but I see Tsipras fighting and I will support him. I want him to win an outright majority," she told DW.

But while that may be the case for the party faithful, for society at large a more complex picture is emerging, and one that indicates that a lot more has changed in Greek politics than the faces of the political leaders.

Dead heat

Tsipras continues to be widely favored to win the elections, but polls show that the difference between Syriza and New Democracy has narrowed almost to a dead heat (a poll conducted by the University of Macedonia between the 1-3 of September put Syriza and ND tied on 27 percent, others give Syriza a small lead).

But perhaps more significant is that, according to the same poll, relatively few voters want to see either a Syriza-led government (19.5 percent) or a New Democracy-led government (14.5 percent). By far the majority of voters (45 percent) responded that they would feel more secure if the elections resulted in a grand coalition government led by a neutral prime minister accepted by all major parties.

Since the rise of Papandreou until the onset of the crisis, Greece has been led almost exclusively by single-party governments. But increasingly that is looking like an era whose time has come and gone. Indeed, the last political leader to win an outright majority in parliamentary elections was Andreas Papandreou's son, George Papandreou, who won the 2009 elections with an almost 44 percent landslide only months before Greece's fiscal crisis exploded. Ever since his resignation in November 2011, Greece has been led by coalition governments.

Coalition for a crisis

"Historically in Greece the people have sought grand coalitions twice before during national emergencies, such as in 1926 following the Asia Minor Catastrophe and in 1947 during the civil war," Thanassis Dimantopoulos, a political scientist who teaches at the Panteion University, told DW. "Now with the economic crisis, the situation could be seen as comparable."

Also significant is that, following the signing of the third Memorandum, these will be the first elections in Greece since the onset of the crisis where the main opposition party is not campaigning on an anti-memorandum platform.

"We are at a point where people have lost confidence in the major parties, but they have also lost the belief that there is an easy way out of the crisis," Nick Malkoutzis, editor of the political and economic analysis website Macropolis, told DW. "We are at a sort of ground zero where all the mainstream parties have committed to a greater or lesser extent to implement the terms of the Memorandum."

Of course whether a Syriza-New Democracy grand coalition government would succeed in passing reforms where others have failed is very much an open question. Theoretically such a coalition may allow opposition to controversial reforms to be sidelined and for the political cost to be shared. However, as the recent past attests, in Greece coalition governments have rarely proved stable.

For now Tsipras has ruled out forming a grand coalition with New Democracy (who have said they are open to the idea). But for the Memorandum agreement that he negotiated to survive, he may find that that is yet another u-turn that he will have to make.