When the new Greek government was formed shortly after Syriza’s historic electoral victory of January 25, 2015, Aristides Baltas, the eminent Greek philosopher, was appointed to head the largest department in the state, with responsibility for administering not only education as well as cultural and religious affairs, but also sport.

As a longstanding leading member of Syriza’s central committee, Baltas had played a key role in coordinating the policy program on the basis of which Syriza made its sudden political breakthrough three years earlier. In an interview Leo Panitch conducted with Baltas shortly before the June 2012 election, Baltas had expressed his concern that very few of even the most politically able active members in the party had “ever thought of how to run a ministry.”

Moreover, he also feared that to try to change the corrupt and clientelist Greek state would not only be an enormously difficult task for which Syriza was not really ready in 2012, but that drawing in the most able people in the party to do this might also leave Syriza bereft of its most able cadre just when it needed them most.