The Economist - USA (2019-07-13)

50 Europe The EconomistJuly 13th 2019

C

entral athenswas uncannily quiet

for an election night. Where were the

firecrackers and the cars filled with party

workers waving Greek flags that would nor-

mally race around Syntagma Square blar-

ing out patriotic songs? After Kyriakos Mit-

sotakis, leader of the centre-right New

Democracy (nd), claimed victory at around

10.30pm on July 7th, a small crowd outside

the party’s headquarters applauded and

shouted, “Prime minister, prime minis-

ter!” A beaming Mr Mitsotakis made a brief

speech thanking his supporters and went

home to his family.

It may be no bad thing if the drama has

gone out of Greek politics, at least for a

while. Under Alexis Tsipras, the charisma-

tic outgoing prime minister, and his left-

wing Syriza government, it was a roller-

coaster ride: from brinkmanship with eu

partners in the summer of 2015 over wheth-

er Greece should leave the euro, to last

year’s €112bn ($132bn) debt-relief package

from its European creditors. The economy

is looking up. Tourist numbers will proba-

bly match last year’s record of more than

30m arrivals. Owners of family businesses

are more cheerful. Stelios Alexakis, a hotel-

ier on the island of Crete, says: “We still

keep cash under the floorboards just in

case, but I have a business plan again.”

Mr Mitsotakis, a former McKinsey con-

sultant, wants to accelerate reforms that

would make Greece more competitive and

encourage foreign investment. With 158

seats in the 300-member parliament his

government is stable enough to make pro-

gress. The new prime minister says he will

push through big laws on taxation and cut-

ting bureaucracy by August. Tax on cor-

porate profits will be cut from 28% to 20%

by January 1st 2021.

Yet some worry that when Mr Mitsota-

kis’s political honeymoon is over, old rival-

ries and clientelism in ndwill resurface

and undermine his efforts to reform. Oth-

ers see him as just the latest manifestation

of the old establishment that got Greece

into trouble in the first place. He is the son

of a previous prime minister; his older sis-

ter served as mayor of Athens; and the

mayor-elect of Athens is her son.

Yields on Greek sovereign bonds

plunged to a record low the day after the

election. But Greece’s official creditors

were less enthusiastic than hedge-fund

managers about the change of govern-

ment. Hours after Mr Mitsotakis was sworn

in, Klaus Regling, the head of the euro

zone’s bail-out fund, warned sternly that

Greece’s commitment to run high budget

surpluses until 2022 was a “cornerstone” of

the debt-relief package. Eurocrats fear that

Mr Mitsotakis wants to knock as much as a

percentage point off the promised surplus

of 3.5% of gdp, in order to promote faster

growth, though he has pledged not to take

any such action without consulting the

country’s bail-out creditors.

Mr Mitsotakis’s 51-member government

is a mixture of seasoned conservative poli-

ticians like Christos Staikouras, the new fi-

nance minister, and bright but untested

technocrats serving as deputy ministers.

“It’s a hopeful sign that he’s found so many

international experts in their respective

fields who are keen to make a difference,”

said Antonis Kamaras, a political commen-

tator and expert on Greece’s diaspora. The

government includes only five women,

however; the most senior is Niki Kera-

meus, 38, a Harvard-trained lawyer charged

with clearing up the muddle in the educa-

tion system left by Syriza’s policy of disre-

garding academic excellence.

Mr Tsipras declared the day after the

election that Syriza would not “disappear”.

He stressed that under his leadership his

party grew from a splinter group with just

3% of the vote to become the mainstream

party of the left. Syriza won 31.5% of the

vote this time (compared with 39.9% for

nd), only some four points down from its

winning percentage at the previous general

election in September 2015.

True to its communist background, Syr-

iza will focus on self-castigation over the

next few months, say analysts, before hold-

ing a party congress. That may be the mo-

ment for Mr Tsipras to transform Syriza

into a left-of-centre party that could com-

mand broader support. In the meantime,

he promises that his party intends to prac-

tise “dynamic” opposition—which is left-

wing code for street protests, strikes and

sit-ins. Mr Mitsotakis has been warned. 7

ATHENS

Kyriakos Mitsotakis ousts Greece’s

leftist government

Greece

Farewell, Syriza

C

inema cametoSamorsun,a small

village in Russia’s far-eastern repub-

lic of Sakha, by way of vhsin the late

Soviet era. There, a young Stepan Bur-

nashev devoured pirated Hollywood

films. At the time, movies in the local

Yakut language barely existed. Mr Bur-

nashev, like many of his peers, admired

one: “Setteekh Sir” (Cursed Land), a 1996

horror flick about spirits that torment a

young family in a Yakut village.

One evening in June Mr Burnashev

called “action” on a Setteekh Sir sequel.

Thesedaysthefilmindustry is booming

in Sakha, which is five times the size of

France but has only 1m people. Half of all

Russian movies made outside Moscow

and St Petersburg are from there. At

cinemas in the capital, Yakutsk, local

productions often outgross Hollywood

blockbusters. In recent years, Yakut

directors have been featured at festivals

from Berlin to Seoul.

This is all the more remarkable given

the challenges filmmakers face. First,

budgets. Mr Burnashev’s previous film,

about a zombie apocalypse triggered by a

virus released from melting permafrost,

had a budget of just 3.4m roubles

($53,000). Then there are the elements.

“The hardest thing to negotiate is na-

ture,” says Anastasia Pitel, an assistant

director on Mr Burnashev’s film. Winter

temperatures can dip below –50oC. Cam-

era batteries run out rapidly. In the sum-

mer, swarms of mosquitoes emerge from

the swampy earth. “When one buzzes in

front of the lens, it looks like a horse is

galloping across the frame,” Ms Pitel

says. Operators must spray rings of bug

repellent around their cameras.

Yakut identity holds clues to the

films’ success. Many are shot in the Yakut

language, a Turkic tongue with little

resemblance to Russian. Scripts draw

heavily on Yakut folklore, a tradition rich

with fantasy, mysticism and otherworld-

ly realms. Beat that, Hollywood.

Arcticzombieapocalypse

Filming in Siberia

YAKUTSK

A burgeoning film scene in Russia’s remote Far East

The dead are only steppes away