From Al Jazeera to Yomiuri Shimbun, in both English and Japanese media, Alex Tsipras' actions are wildly misinterpreted and misrepresented. Here are some of the misrepresentations, and the reasons why they are false.
(1) Tsipras decided to hold a national referendum because he wants to maintain his popularity by playing the innocent victim.
This was a common reaction of many writers in both the English and Japanese media. There are many unjustified assumptions that go into this claim. For instance, the anti-austerity policy might actually be wildly unpopular, now that the country has to face a real decision between austerity and a Grexit. The Greek people are rushing to withdraw their euros from their bank account. Therefore, why do writers assume that a national referendum would be against austerity?
The real purpose of the referendum is, I think, to resolve something which SYRIZA (and the IMF and the ECB too) really doesn't know, namely, how the Greek people feel and think about the present situation. It really has come to a point where the government has to hand the decision over to the people.
If SYRIZA proposed austerity measures, then they would fail to maintain their responsibility, since their mandate was to ease the suffering of the people which resulted from austerity and clientelism. If, on the other hand, SYRIZA, the IMF, and the ECB all agreed to disagree, and thus agreed to a Grexit, that would also mean that SYRIZA failed to listen to the people - perhaps the people would have preferred austerity to an immediate Grexit.
In short, this misrepresentation fails to see the situation from the Greek people's perspective. The Greek people have the right to demand the government to make a decision which they would tolerate. In order to find out what this decision is, it is necessary to hold a national referendum.
(2) The Greek state does not want to repay any of the debt.
This is another common misunderstanding, again in both English and Japanese media. However, if one actually reads SYRIZA's 40 manifesto points, it immediately becomes clear that their goal is exactly the opposite: to come up with a long-term debt repayment solution.
When Varoufakis says that the demands made by the IMF and the ECB are "strange," this only means that the demands do not lead to a sustainable repayment. It is actually the IMF and the ECB that do not want Greece to repay their debt. These institutions need to have countries like Greece to stay indebted, so that the former can squeeze out surplus from the latter and the use this surplus to repay their own debts or to make further loans in other parts of the world.
However, in the media, many writers propagate the misunderstanding that Greece does not want to repay any of the debt. Why? The answer is that it makes it easier to write news articles which readers would like to read. (Although, given the recent protests in the UK against austerity, even this appeal might be misplaced.) In the world of political journalism, the method to generate articles quickly is to frame the issue as a fight between the good guys and the bad guys. The bad guy is Greece, and the good guy is everybody else. It makes the readers feel good, because even if Greece really is in crisis, it allows the readers to feel that it is "their fault" - a common way to stop thinking about something that requires analysis.
Even a cursory look at SYRIZA's manifesto quickly shows that SYRIZA is thinking very hard about how to repay Greece's debt. A little bit of research and analysis would have made it clear that it is actually in the interest of the creditors to not have a sustainable, long-term debt repayment strategy. Greece knows what it wants and what it needs to do in order to achieve its goals. It is the IMF and the ECB who do not know what they are trying to achieve, and, in their insecurity, desperately try to maintain the position of power.
(3) SYRIZA is anti-austerity because it wants to hold on to power by being popular.
This argument, again assumed in much of what is written in the media, mistakes the cause for its effect. It is not that SYRIZA decided to go anti-austerity when it realized that that is the way they can come into power. This makes it sound as if SYRIZA has some hidden agenda which it aims to achieve by using the anti-austerity as a scapegoat. The truth is otherwise. SYRIZA is popular because the people want austerities to end. Moreover, SYRIZA wants power because power is needed to end austerities. Anti-austerity is an end, a purpose, not a means.
Again, the fallacious argument in the media is evoked here to frame the issue in a way that is easy to relate to. Many readers are trained to feel that every political party with popular support are actually only wanting power, and that their popularity is actually nothing more than "populism." In some cases, this is true. However, in order to show that populism is indeed what is going on, one has to clearly indicate what the hidden agenda is. So far, I have not come across anything convincing in terms of what SYRIZA's "hidden agenda" might be. The party is basically an anti-austerity party, and anti-austerity and debt repayment are its priorities.
The situation is completely different with, for example, the present Japanese government. In Japan, the Abe administration holds up "economic recovery" as a pretext for introducing other measures such as a radical reform of the constitution and a drastic revision of Asian history. By comparison, SYRIZA does not have such measures; it is a genuinely democratic party. Perhaps it is too difficult for writers and readers nowadays to even conceive of the possibility that certain political parties do have concrete strategies for furthering the welfare of the people.
(4) If there is a Grexit, the fault lies exclusively with SYRIZA who failed to come up with a reasonable reform plan.
According to this line of thought, the previous New Democracy government was at least "responsible" even though the austerity measures were not a sustainable debt repayment strategy and even though the Greek people suffered massively due to these measures. SYRIZA, so the thought goes, on the other hand, is not only not able to lift austerity measures, but is also unable to maintain their responsibility to the IMF and to the ECB. SYRIZA is different; and the difference makes the IMF and the ECB suspicious. SYRIZA needs to convince its creditors otherwise by assimilating themselves to the previous, New Democracy government. By failing to do so, SYRIZA is responsible for a Grexit.
This argument relies upon previously mentioned assumptions, such as that SYRIZA does not have a sustainable debt repayment plan, and that they are against austerity only for the sake of maintaining popularity. Since these assumptions are not sound, in must be clear here that the argument also falls.
The real reason why there will be a Grexit is either (1) after the national referendum, the Greek people choose to return to the drachma, or (2) the IMF and the ECB refuse to cooperate with SYRIZA in trying to come up with a sustainable debt repayment plan. If (1), then the Grexit is actually something that the Greek people have chosen, and so SYRIZA would not be accused of working against the interest of the people. If (2), then it is actually the IMF and the ECB's responsibility that Greece had to return to the drachma. Either way, SYRIZA is not directly responsible; they would rather be taking up a choice made by either the people or the creditors. Here, it is crucial to remember that, while the choice of a Grexit might be made by the people or the creditors, the situation which calls for such a choice is made by the creditors' unwillingness to discuss a long-term solution with the new Greek government.
Finally, it is also worth seriously thinking about whether a Grexit really is a "Grecostrophe." It is true that, according to the current credit system, the new drachma would be "weak" compared to the euro. Therefore, the major challenge for the Greek government would be to establish economic partnership with other countries, so that materially speaking the Greek people will not suffer. This really is a serious issue - but why automatically assume that the government will fail to address it, that all other countries will work in the interest of the IMF? On the other hand, having a sovereign currency means that Greece will be in a position to develop what some recent writers call a "sovereign money system." SYRIZA is also a pro-basic income party, which means that it is looking for ways not only to guarantee the people's right to survive (the very first and basic human right), but also to sustain effective demand in an otherwise stagnating economy. Basic income and sovereign money also helps to reduce the amount of bureaucratic arbitrariness, another issue which SYRIZA actively aims to address. A Grexit also gives some breathing space for the new Greek government to implement such policies which were impossible under the regime of the euro and the domination by the creditors.
