[Syriza was already in the trajectory of transforming into a
“modern” European social democratic party that has disengaged from
a commitment to organised members, grassroots organisations and bodies
elected by and accountable to the rank and file.]
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SYRIZA’S NEW LEADER. GAME OVER FOR THE LEFT?  
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Dimitra Kyrillou
October 24, 2023
The Left Berlin
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_ Syriza was already in the trajectory of transforming into a
“modern” European social democratic party that has disengaged from
a commitment to organised members, grassroots organisations and bodies
elected by and accountable to the rank and file. _

Stefanos Kasselakis (left), with SYRIZA MPs Effie Achtsioglou, Nikos
Pappas, and Efklidis Tsakalotos: Photo: Eurokinissi,

 

_“…the modern Left acknowledges the economic environment in which
we live. The word “capital” is not a word to be demonized. And the
word ‘work’ has to be an appeal for ‘cooperation’, for a new
social contract in which workers are actively involved in the
development of the corporation.”_

(Newly elected president of SYRIZA, Stefanos Kasselakis, speaking at
the Annual General Assembly of the Hellenic Federation of Enterprises
(SEV) on October 9 2023).

On June 29 Alexis Tsipras submitted his resignation from Syriza’s
leadership under the load of a humiliating defeat at the consequent
parliamentary elections of May 21 and June 25, in which Greece’s
left party scored a mere 18% (in comparison with 33% in 2019), while
the ruling right wing party of New Democracy received 41% and the
mandate to form a self-reliant government for a second time.

Although it was obvious that the opposition party was entering a new
phase in the search for a new strategy, hardly could its members
expect that the president to be elected three months later would
shamelessly express such political opinions. After all, Syriza is
still considered a party of the radical Left, one that 8 years ago was
promising a break with the ruthless capitalist institutions of the EU
and a better future for the many. So how did it end like this?

At the aftermath of the elections, Syriza members could fairly agree
that Syriza had failed to provide opposition to the harsh neoliberal
policies of Kyriakos Mitsotakis and his government, despite the
opportunities offered by the combination of the latter’s economic
incompetency and the social struggles which broke off, including
strikes, anti-racist struggles, a #metoo movement, unrest inside
universities, etc. During this period Syriza voted in favor of more
than 50% of the government’s laws.

Four party cadres rushed to express their candidacy for the
leadership: Former minister Effie Achtsioglou, Euklides Tsakalotos,
former minister of finance, representing the left tendency
“Umbrella” inside Syriza, Tsipras’s close ally Nikos Pappas and
veteran social democrat Stefanos Tzoumakas, who originally came from
PASOK. Everyone was talking about a match between the left Tsakalotos
and the more pragmatic Achtsioglou until, on August 29 Stefanos
Kasselakis announced his own candidacy.

WHO IS STEFANOS KASSELAKIS?  

Back in May, almost nobody knew the handsome young gay man who,
following Tsipras’s recommendation, was included in the
parliamentary elections ballot. Born in Athens, Kasselakis moved to
the U.S. after receiving a scholarship and graduated with a B.A. in
International Relations and a B.Sc in finance from the University of
Pennsylvania. While he was a student, he volunteered for Joe Biden’s
campaign during the 2008 Democratic Party presidential primaries. A
clear supporter of free market, “less” state, and liberal reforms,
he had expressed openly his admiration for the right wing leader
Mitsotakis in articles he used to write for the conservative Greek
newspaper “The national Herald of New York”, but ended up a
supporter of  Syriza. He had worked for Goldman Sachs, for the think
tank of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in
Washington D.C. and later founded Swift Bulk shipping company. Before
standing in the parliamentary elections and running for Syriza’s
leadership, he hardly had any relation with the party. He appeared
just in one TV panel to replace someone else and attracted lots of
sympathy as he stood against homophobic accusations expressed by a
far-right candidate. After the elections he returned to the US, where
he was permanently residing.

Nevertheless, running a short-term but super modern and glossy
campaign, Kasselakis enjoyed a clear victory over Achtsioglou in the
second round of Syriza’s elections. He hardly focused on the
country’s issues (poverty, wild fires, floods, repression), but
mainly on his own advantages as a qualified leader capable to defeat
Mitsotakis by transforming Syriza into a type of U.S. Democrats party.

Pro- government press welcomed the victory of Kasselakis in SYRIZA,
seizing the opportunity to celebrate the “end of the Left” and
commenting that “the government of Mitsotakis has practically no
opponent”.

This is far from the real picture, but then, where did he get his
support from?  For the lovers of conspiracy theories, Kasselakis is
the perfect case for CIA involvement in Greece’s political life and,
considering the country’s rough post war history, this sounds
possible. However, such theories explain neither the disappointment
among older members that did not show up to vote in the leadership
elections, nor why some 40,000 new-comers showed up and waited
patiently in long queues to join the party (total participation was
around 150,000 members), in the vivid hope that they will elect the
leader to save the people from the hated right-wing government of New
Democracy.

Today everyone knows that Kasselakis was introduced by Alexis Tsipras
himself and the group around him, notably the feisty ex-health
minister (and ex far-leftist) Pavlos Pollakis, (in)famous for being
tough against the right wing. Tsipras did not make any official
statement, but what happened is that considerable sections of the
party apparatus, which before were blatantly aligned with Alexis
Tsipras, moved to Kasselakis, using exactly the arguments that the
leadership had previously set up against the internal party minority,
i.e. blaming the Left for the party’s isolation from Greek society.
Only this time, the same arguments were used against both, Achtsioglou
and Tsakalotos. Pappas of course rushed to support Kasselakis.

This was the second time that Syriza practiced the system of electing
the party leader with the system of polls for all party members and
not in the party conference, following conscious political discussion
among the active members and decisions on the party programme. Alexis
Tsipras had introduced this reform in 2022 on the argument of
“empowering the rank and file” and had himself elected with 99.05%
(!). Until his resignation last summer, no one in the party dared
question his politics or his leadership, including the left Umbrella
tendency. The latter focused their differentiation on organizational
issues and the lack of internal democracy but, how can these issues be
separated from politics?

KASSELAKIS IS THE OUTCOME (NOT THE CAUSE) OF SYRIZA’S RIGHT-WING
TRAJECTORY

Syriza’s rise, U-turn in 2015 and eventual fall has been broadly
discussed and analyzed elsewhere in this webpage. There is however a
milestone: When the party lost the 2019 elections and moved from the
office to opposition, the leadership team around Alexis Tsipras
decided that Syriza should get rid of its radical past, because this
was a legacy of the era when the party was hovering only between 3 and
5%. In this context, a party that sets itself to become a government
partner but at the time had to be in opposition, had to adopt the
attitude of a “government in anticipation”. This “violent
maturing” of 2015 became a fundamental principle and was
incorporated to Syriza’s programme and organizational structure.
This describes in summary the tragedy of a left party delivering
right-wing opposition, one that failed to face the horrible right wing
government of Mitsotakis.

There was no “novelty” in this strategy. In Italy the Communist
Party changed even its name from P.C.I. to Democratic Party, and
completely dumped the old remnants about the “government of the
Left”. It became evidently a party of neoliberalism, with Renzi as
prime minister, who implemented a harsh programme of cuts,
unemployment, abolition of collective agreements and undemocratic
amendments to the constitution. These developments paved the way for
Salvini and later Meloni to increase their influence even in the main
working-class regions of Italy. Despite negative international
experience, the leadership around Tsipras engaged in this destructive
project. Internally, they humiliated every leftist voice that
disagreed or even wavered along this path. SYRIZA’s last conference
was a triumphant domination of Tsipras and his politics. No organised
tendency dared question him or his political direction.

The members of the left opposition “Umbrella”, stayed loyal under
the slogan “there is only one President” and tried to stick to the
“unanimously proposed political programme of the conference”, they
only questioned the proposed organizational reforms. The method and
arguments with which they fought this battle turned out to be piece of
cake for Tsipras, who accused them of conducting “a game of thrones
that is indifferent to Greek society”!

Syriza was already in the trajectory of transforming itself to a
“modern” European social democratic party, one that has since long
disengaged from the commitment to organised members, grassroots
organisations and bodies elected by and accountable to the rank and
file. For “modern” social democracy, this kind of  party is
nothing more than “inner apparatuses detached from society” that
has to be abandoned. What is needed is a “charismatic leadership”
that is free to make decisions independently from party structures,
and the people “judge” those decisions by voting in general
elections.

SYRIZA finalized this process at its latest conference. And of course
it made sure to carry out the right-wing agenda in practice, even when
the government of New Democracy was shaken by scandals, mass anger and
mobilizations. In the period of the pandemic, when hospital workers
were fighting battles demanding the strengthening of the Greek NHS,
the proposal of the “new” Syriza to the government was that a
“commonly accepted” health minister had to be appointed. When the
island of Evia burned out by wild fires in 2021 and the anger
culminated to the slogan “Mitsotakis fuck you”, SYRIZA delivered
lessons of “political culture”.  When the train accident at Tempi
caused by train privatizations and leaving 57 people dead sparked
massive mobilizations in March this year, SYRIZA spoke about the need
to “move smoothly” to general elections. Even after the horror of
the shipwreck at Pylos, one that cost hundreds of refugee lives just
before the second polls, Alexis Tsipras’ SYRIZA insisted on
supporting the EU policy against refugees and defending the wall built
at the border with Turkey. It is impossible to separate the entire
rightward trajectory of Syriza from the election of Kasselakis.

WHAT NEXT?

While this article was being written, the second round of council and
regional elections was finalized, with New Democracy on the one hand
remaining dominant, but on the other losing bastions of their
influence. The three biggest cities of Athens, Thessaloniki and Patras
are now under the control of the opposition. In Patras the communist
member Peletidis won for the third consecutive time and in six
prefectures the government’s favourites lost. However, Syriza gained
almost nothing, most of the winners came from the broad influence of
PASOK, or were right wing dissidents. The Communist Party increased
their overall vote and influence. The radical, anticapitalist Left
managed to elect a fair number of counselors, especially where groups
and formations stood together (as in the cities of Athens and
Thessaloniki for example). The electoral law is scandalously
undemocratic, tailored to assist big candidacies (they get elected
from the first round if they score 43%) and excludes smaller ones with
the threshold of 3%. Abstention was huge, signifying that a great
number of voters feel alienated from all candidates and this kind of
representation.

The results opened a new circle of dispute which, coupled with
Kasselakis’s pro capital statements and recent unquestioned support
for Israel’s attacks on Gaza created inflammable material. But the
leadership’s respond is to transfer the anticipated party conference
from this November to end of February 2024 and avoid any discourse. A
couple of days ago Stefanos Tzoumakas was expelled via a Twitter
message by Kasselakis, after the latter read several bitter statements
expressed by the former in the press. European Parliament MP Stelios
Kouloglou just resigned from Syriza complaining for both, right wing
political moves and manipulations. So did an increasing number of the
(not so few) left wing members still in Syriza. There is an on-going
discussion inside “Umbrella” on whether to stay or resign in
co-ordination.

The Left in Greece has never been a marginalized political force.
Although split in several formations spanning from the Left of Syriza
to the Communist Party and the anticapitalist Left, it has always
played a significant role in social confrontations. The momentum and
the plain numbers of the people who took to the streets after Tempe or
in strikes and anti-racist demonstrations far exceeds the votes the
Left gets in elections. The social power of the Left is many times
greater than its electoral power.

The question to be answered therefore is not whether the Left is gone,
but what kind of left ideas, left strategy and left organization is
needed today, so that the upcoming social struggles will be
victorious.

_Dimitra Kryillou is a Greek socialist, living in Berlin. She was an
elected member of ANTARYSYA's National Council. She is currently an
active member of the LINKE Berlin Internationals._

_The Left Berlin is a community of international progressives in
Berlin. We run an online journalism project hosting a range of
left-wing perspectives in English, as well as collaborating on
progressive campaigns and events in the city. The site is run by a
team of volunteer editors, writers and translators._

_We send out regular weekly newsletters with a digest of leftist
politics around the city. It’s a great way to keep an overview of
what’s happening and how you can stay active regardless of what your
cause is.  This project emerged from the Berlin LINKE Internationals
and maintains close links but the site has editorial autonomy and
attempts to reflect a range of debate on the left._

* Greece
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* Syriza
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* social democracy
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