Alexis Tsipras Resigns as MP, Paving Way for New Party

Few figures in modern Greek history have divided opinion as sharply as former Prime minister Alexis Tsipras. To some, he is the firebrand populist who took the country to the edge of financial abyss. To others he was the man who dared to confront Europe’s most powerful institutions at the height of the debt crisis but at the end betrayed his own promises when he signed the bailout agreement he once campaigned against. On Monday, Alexis Tsipras announced his resignation as a member of parliament for SYRIZA, a move widely interpreted as a prelude to launching a new political entity outside the party he once led.

Tsipras’s rise to power has been nothing short of extraordinary. From student activism in the 1990s to leading Greece’s first radical left-wing government in 2015, he became the youngest prime minister in the country’s history. His tenure was marked by high-stakes drama: a referendum rejecting austerity, a near exit from the eurozone, and the abrupt reversal that kept Greece in the currency union but left deep political scars and societal divisions. He transformed SYRIZA from a fringe coalition into a governing party, yet the same transformation blurred its identity and ultimately eroded its support, leaving