SYRIZA aiming for the center and the young vote
SYRIZA chief Alexis Tsipras is pondering the idea of taking the issue of safety from Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis’ pre-election agenda and using it to respond to the public outcry stemming from the Tempe rail crash. The leftist opposition is thinking of launching the slogan “Safety Everywhere” beside its previous “Justice Everywhere” rallying cry in order to underscore the conservatives’ failure to create its much-touted “executive” state.
In the wake of the February 28 accident, the leftist opposition is seeing an “anti-Mitsotakis” front being formed in the place of the “anti-SYRIZA” wave that lost it the election in 2019. At the time, Mitsotakis was the answer to ending the coexistence of the left with the far-right and the government that raised taxes on the middle class and was stigmatized by the national tragedy at Mati. Now, in 2023, Tsipras will seek to propose a progressive coalition as the solution for dispensing with the vaunted but stigmatized “executive state” that New Democracy and its leader had promised.
There’s a lot of discussion going on in SYRIZA on how its governance model can be brought up to speed so that it addresses the electorate’s concerns after the tragedy. SYRIZA’s response to whether the next government should be a single-party administration or coalition is to talk about an “electable” government.
Tsipras has come under fire inside the party for choosing to tone down the critical rhetoric against the government in the first phase of the pandemic. This decision was part of his strategy to maintain and evolve SYRIZA’s profile as that of a party that is ready to govern. A string of recent initiatives also point to his desire to broaden the party’s appeal among centrist voters: his visit to Bank of Greece Governor Yannis Stournaras, despite the gulf that divides them; his trip to Belarus and his meeting with the newly elected president of Cyprus, Nikos Christodoulides; his meeting with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken; his clash with party firebrand Pavlos Polakis; and his interviews with non-partisan media have all been moves directed at the moderate voter looking for a political roof.
In the same vein, Tsipras may, according to sources, also soften his stance on SYRIZA’s abstention from parliamentary votes, an initiative launched in protest at the government’s handling of the wiretapping affair. Discussions have already taken place for SYRIZA to return to Parliament to take part in the plenary session on the measures being drawn up to help the families of victims of the rail tragedy that rocked the nation.
One of the issues over which Tsipras has not shown restraint was that of Supreme Court Deputy Prosecutor Isidoros Dogiakos. He has called for the judicial official’s arrest for allegedly hampering the privacy watchdog’s probe into the wiretaps and for his resignation because his son, says SYRIZA, had been transferred to the service of the office of former transport minister Kostas A. Karamanlis. Tsipras’ legal team argues that Dogiakos has overstepped the line between the executive and the judicial authority. Mitsotakis’ letter telling Dogiakos how to deal with the Tempe crash underscores that belief further.
SYRIZA believes that it stands to benefit as anger against the government over the Tempe crash is encouraging undecided voters to “punish” ND at the ballot box. The opposition may not have time before the elections, however, to reach out to pensioners and the middle class as much as it would have liked, but young people who have been galvanized by the crash are a different matter and their support can be secured simply by supporting their public rallies.
According to the latest poll by Prorata, 27.7% of voters in the 17-34 age group plan to back SYRIZA, as opposed to 19.6% for New Democracy, so if the leftist party manages to energize this contingent it may tip the political balance.
