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The assumption in German Chancellor Angela Merkel's entourage before Sunday's Greek election was that Tsipras, the charismatic leader of the far-left Syriza party, would eke out a narrow victory and shift quickly from confrontation to compromise mode. Instead, after cruising to victory and clinching a fast-track coalition deal with the right-wing Independent Greeks party, he has signalled in his first days in office that he has no intention of backing down.

SYRIZA has won the election in Greece, securing 149 seats out of 300. This article was written before the election, but speaks to many of the criticisms aimed at this left anti-austerity party both from the bureaucrats of the European Union as well as from left groups. In addition the article speaks to the difficult choices the party must face in order to find a new path towards recovery for the people of Greece.

What Syriza stands for is what Spain's newly elected Republican government stood for in the early 1930s at a time when the Nazis were on the rise. A democratic Greece under Syriza would represent what democratic Spain represented for the international left in the 1930s. The prospects for a different outcome are better, provided there is strong international support for giving a Syriza government the breathing room it will need.

The Greek people must be thanked for putting the need for changing the course of economic policies firmly onto the European agenda. The stakes are high. A failure in Greece will be seen as vindication of austerity as the only option. Those convinced that Europe needs to change cannot sit on the fence, but need to engage in support of the new winds of reform

Syriza is not the only left-wing party in Greece, and by some measures it’s not even the largest. In organizational terms, the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) is bigger. Ignoring it, as most of the Left is content to do, means ignoring a force with important roots in the trade union movement and the longest history of all surviving Greek parties.

An editorial on the upcoming elections in Greece by the International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers' Associations (IUF) The Greek elections offer a potential breakthrough, but to carry out their program a government of the Left will need massive understanding and support abroad. Unions should be in the forefront of building that support.

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Below is the governmental program of the Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA) announced by Alexis Tsipras at the Thessaloniki International Fair, September 15, 2014. According to the latest opinion poll, SYRIZA is at 36.5%, with a seven percentage point lead over the conservative New Democracy. The current contest for the presidency of Greece looks likely to lead to a new parliamentary election.

While heavy on academics, the candidates on the Podemos ticket represented more of a cross-section of the Spanish citizenry than any other party in the country. Their ages ranged from eighteen to seventy-eight, and their vocations from firefighter to librarian, but most importantly they included unemployed workers of all shades.