Syriza’s finance minister Yanis Varoufakis blogs
Yanis Varoufakis is Greek’s new finance minister, swept to power with the historic victory of Syriza. Varoufakis is an academic who has worked in universities in Britain, Australia and Greece. He has long blogged about his political and economic ideas and yesterday he posted that he didn’t see why becoming Finance Minister should stop this habit. He wrote:
For hope to be revived we must all strive to change the ways of a dismal past. Maintaining an open line with the outside world may be a small step in that direction.
Varoufaskis is an accidental politician, and describes himself as taking power reluctantly. When Paul Mason asked him on Channel 4 News how he felt about suddenly coming to the brink of power after being on the outskirts for so long, Varoufakis answered:
Scary. One word: scary. But on the other hand, even in universities, I always believed that any colleague who wanted to be head of department or dean should be disqualified immediately, because you should only be doing this reluctantly as public service. So we are reluctant candidates for power.
Politics just got a lot more interesting.