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imageATHENS: Alexis Tsipras, the 40-year-old leader of anti-austerity party Syriza poised to win Sunday's Greek election, has come a long way from his early days as a Communist youth activist.

But he still has a youthful dislike for ties and a passion for Che Guevara.

Tipped to be his country's youngest prime minister since 1865, the Greek public first learned his name in 1990, when as a 17-year-old representing a school sit-in he told a TV interviewer: "We want the right to judge for ourselves whether to skip class."

An engineer by training, Tsipras was born in July 1974, a fateful year for Greece. It marked the collapse of a seven-year army dictatorship that mercilessly persecuted leftists and Communists, and culminated in a bloody crackdown against a student uprising.

Once a brash Communist youth activist who enjoyed riding motorbikes and abhorred ties, the boyish father-of-two has recently sought to modify his image as power and responsibility beckoned.

The nerdy glasses went long ago, the trademark Tintin-style crest of hair has been flattened, and, in the latest step towards premiership, Tsipras is now penning articles in German and Italian newspapers, making references to Greece's "fiscal waterboarding" by its EU-IMF creditors.

Taking steps to improve his command of English, he has also sought to boost his international standing through meetings with Pope Francis, European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi and even German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble -- a man whose preoccupation with fiscal discipline he had often attacked -- and is likely to continue to do so.

Copyright AFP (Agence France-Presse), 2015

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