Almost a decade has passed. To assault the European sky, to change the european politics forever, to end the austerity of Brussels to sink into the greek polls already see yourself muddy in a internal war to which there is no end in sight.
In January 2015, a young and popular Alexis Tsipras arrived at the office of the Greek prime minister to, as an example of what had to happen to the old continent, change everything in Europa. This Sunday, his match, Syrizawill elect a new leader in primaries that, the party leaders hope, can end the last year of knives in the backinternal disputes, splits and internal conflicts aired in public.
The candidates for the leadership of the historic leftist party are four: Sokratis Famellosleader of the Syriza parliamentary group; Nikolas FarantourisMEP of the party; Apostolos Gletsosdeputy in the Greek Parliament and famous Greek actor; and Pavlos Polakisveteran member of Syriza and former Deputy Minister of the Interior and Health in the two Tsipras governments.
One of them will be the successor of the party leader until now, Stéfanos Kaselakiswho won another primary just a year ago. This former banker Goldman Sachswith a personalist style, little dialogue and distance from the bases, has been harshly criticized by Syriza’s historical figures, who saw the 36-year-old politician as a stranger, arrived from nowhere —Kaselakis has lived most of his life in USA and speaks better in English than in Greek—and with hardly any political ideology.
Kaselakis, in fact, was expelled from the party leadership in September of this year in a extraordinary congress of the party made to present a motion of censure to the then leader of Syriza.
According to the Greek press, Kaselakis initially wanted to run again in the primaries that will take place this Sunday, but the central committee of the training did not allow it. In response, the young politician has formed a new party, which does not yet have a name.
“The September congress was a missed opportunity for dialogue and reconciliation within the party. The widening ideological gap within the party was not just about Kaselakis’s leadership, but about the fundamental question of what role Syriza should play in the contemporary greek politics“, writes Emilia Salvanuprofessor of the University of Thessaly.
A political death
When the new Kaselakis formation is founded, this will mark the third split of Syriza since the existence of the Greek formation, founded in 2012 as a party. With Kaselakis, in fact, several deputies in the Greek Parliament have left, which has made Syriza tie in deputies with the entercenter-left. Syriza has lost – due to the resignations of party parliamentarians – the position of opposition leadership. It is the enter who now leads the formations opposed to the ruling New Democracy (ND)commanded by the Greek Prime Minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis.
This is attested by the polls: according to the average of polls, Syriza is around 5% of the votes —In the last elections he got 20%—. It would be the fifth force and would be light years away from the two parties with the most voting intentions: the conservative ND, with the 30%; and the Pasok, with the 19%.
“Stéfanos Kaselakis, the man many saw as the Messiah —said this week Stelios Kuloglua former Syriza deputy, will be remembered as the gravedigger who buried the corpse of the game while what I had to do was monitor his health.
The war between Kaselakis and Syriza is currently such that the party this month called on its former leader to make public his declaration of assetsand has asked the Greek prosecutor’s office to investigate whether Kaselakis has shares and invested capital in companies off shore abroad.
“Many Syriza voters have now stayed orphans —Salnunu considers—. And the emergence of new parties and movements on the Greek left does not further fragment the opposition to New Democracy. Meanwhile, Syriza seems to have completely lost its dominance of its political space, and its new leadership will have to face the double challenge of rebuilding a new broken match and deal with an increasingly secondary role in Hellenic politics.
