SYRIZA: The 7+1 candidates who want to take the lead

Although Kasselakis has been deposed, it is difficult to foresee a revival of SYRIZA in the near future. The crisis will deepen and we will see many more episodes. There may be agreements on positions, political alliances, organizational structures, priorities and programs. However, there is a lack of a strong personality who could successfully tackle the reorganization of the official opposition and give it a government perspective.

The people currently being considered as possible successors to Kasselakis – Polakis, Famellos, Gerovasili, Papas, Farantouris, Gletsos and even Dourou have been mentioned – do not have the attractive image and, above all, the leadership needed to challenge Mitsotakis. This is what SYRIZA needs: to find the jewel that will lead it into government.

From left to right: Elena Akrita, Katerina Notopoulou, Olga Gerovasili and Christos Spirtzis at the Dramatists' Congress last February. Now we are facing a new split.

Kasselakis proved tragically inadequate. During his one-year tenure at the head of Kallithea, he was more like a televangelist than a politician. Instead of uniting SYRIZA, he divided it. Instead of raising the party's approval ratings, he caused them to sink. Instead of overthrowing Mitsotakis, as he claimed, he strengthened him and made him dominant. As a result, the no-confidence motion against him received a comfortable majority in the Central Committee.

Kasselakis is finished. Even if he runs again, he is unlikely to win. His possible re-election would bring even more disrepute to Kallithea, leading to whining, factionalism and division. When he lost the power of leadership, his supporters began to dwindle. The allies who had brought him to the top turned their backs on him. Polakis “stabbed” him, and Papas will probably wave goodbye to him as well. Even the Kasselistas, especially those MPs with a strong survival instinct, will turn their backs on him.

Stefanos was tested as a rival to Mitsotakis and found unsuitable. Someone might suggest that he could form his own party. Yes, he could. But now it is too late. Now he is no longer president. Now he has been removed. It will be difficult to find 10 MPs to form a group. If he had decided to renew his mandate from the grassroots while excluding dissidents, he would only need five MPs to form a group.

And there is another very important point. Now that he has been deposed, he cannot claim to be founding his own party and recruiting MPs. If he were to do so, he would be accused of making PASOK the official opposition and labelled a “sit-thief”. The things he has said so far (about the New Left or discrediting dissidents) would be turned against him. Where he spat, he would now lick.

Of course, as has been repeatedly demonstrated, change is a characteristic of this man. Today he may say A, tomorrow B, and the day after something else. So he could set up a party in the hope that his media flair would overcome the negative aspects of the venture and present himself as a victim of dark party mechanisms and the bureaucrats of the “Tsipras regime”. After all, he has gained a fan club in the year he has been in office. SYRIZA has become a political caricature, while Stefanos has become a television and internet personality.

There is also a third option: returning to Miami. This cannot be ruled out. Some say he might choose this option because if the politicians' “asset declarations” become public, he might no longer have the status of party leader under new leadership, nor enjoy the warm support of SYRIZA.

The Political Secretariat

Otherwise, the Political Secretariat will decide on the next steps tomorrow, starting with the Central Committee meeting next Sunday to determine the timing and content of the congress. The statutory congress scheduled for October 6 is effectively cancelled. The question is whether it will be replaced by an extraordinary or a regular congress. Opinions differ. Some argue that the mistake of last year's congress, where a leader was elected without discussing the program and political positions, should not be repeated.

In any case, new delegates should be elected so that the new leader is not elected by the delegates who (re)elected Alexis Tsipras in 2022 with a Stalinist percentage (99.12%) and preferred Kasselakis over Effie Achtsioglou as leader for 2023. If they decide to hold a programmatic congress first and then elect a leader, we will know the new leadership of SYRIZA in December, possibly right before or even after the budget debate in parliament, so in the new year.

In the magical world of SYRIZA, anything can happen, nothing is ruled out. In the meantime, the new leadership of PASOK will have been elected. This is something that many in SYRIZA and PASOK want, especially those who are most concerned about the turnout of the pluralist center-left camp to defeat Mitsotakis and change the government.

Polakis wants to use the momentum his candidacy has gained from the conflict with Kasselakis and therefore proposes that the congress on October 6 go ahead as planned and elect a president, rather than making changes to the statutes. The “87” should first agree on a candidate who may not be Famello, but someone who is ready to “sacrifice” himself for a more prominent and widely accepted figure if the unity of the center-left advances.

Alexis Tsipras

And since many are wondering whether Alexis Tsipras is or will soon be in line with developments, the answer of his associates and long-time interlocutors is monotonously the same: those who involve Alexis in scenarios of a return to SYRIZA are mistaken, and reality will continue to refute them. He will not make statements, will not give interviews, and will not participate in leading the election of a new leadership of SYRIZA. He is definitely interested, but he did not give up his post as SYRIZA leader to become team leader. Neither the “87” nor anyone else can act as a member of an alleged guard of his. He is not a religious leader who has followers. Simple and clear. Look for Kasselakis' successor far away from Tsipras.

The lucky one in this case, however, is Nikos Papas. He took Famellos' place as group leader and will now speak at the Thessaloniki International Fair (DETH) as acting chairman of SYRIZA in Kasselakis' absence, as well as facing Kyriakos Mitsotakis in the first leadership debate in parliament. Not bad for a politician who many of his colleagues thought was finished after his conviction by the Special Court and the meager 8.7% he received as a candidate for the SYRIZA chairmanship last September.

Kasselakis' mistake

It should be noted that when Papas said that “Kasselakis will speak at DETH if he has not fallen,” he most likely knew about Kasselakis' impending defeat. After all, some of his influential associates had switched to the “87”. Polakis and the “87” knew about the existence of a majority for the motion since Friday and were waiting for Kasselakis' mistake to put it to a vote. Kasselakis refused to appeal to the base alone. And that was his first mistake.

The second and fatal mistake was when he agreed to let 74 Central Committee members vote by telephone. The first vote on Saturday among those present ended with 122 to 90. The votes against had a majority, but not the 50+1 of Central Committee members (148 out of 295) needed to remove Kasselakis. If the 74 had not voted by telephone, the 50+1 majority could not have been achieved. The clever bird was caught by the beak. Stefanos thought that with Papas' staff he controlled the Central Committee.

It was also proven that Sfiggos, Dourou, Rigas, Skorinis, Voulgarakis and others who told him “the motion will not be accepted” were not good at arithmetic. And now he is running and can hardly catch up. He may even face complete humiliation if he runs and loses to Polakis in the second round. This is not unlikely, since the delegates may prefer the fiery Polakis to the debater Kasselakis as the lesser evil, regardless of what happens next in Kallithea.

Anyway, the… circus at SYRIZA continues. After Polakis's outburst of anger, Linou's tearful outbursts, Tsipras' “he doesn't answer my calls”, the wedding celebrations in Chania, Spirtzis in the disciplinary committee, the dismissal of Famellos, the swamp in Spetses and the name change from SYRIZA to SYSA, we have now reached the “masked” members of the Central Committee and the “murder” of young Stefanos. And that's not all. It goes without saying that the “absurdities” happening at SYRIZA under Kasselakis are a blessing for the government, the opposition parties and especially PASOK.

And in any case, the official opposition's relationship to social demands and the concerns of households and businesses is as distant as the relationship between a phantom and turpentine. That is why not only citizens, but also SYRIZA voters are increasingly saying to the protagonists of this farce: “You have made us tired.” And that is the truth. SYRIZA is now getting tired. And tiredness in politics is worse than laughter…