What do the ‘exes’ think about the center-left?
Former SYRIZA and PASOK leaders are watching and occasionally influencing developments. How is the landscape shaping up with new leadership contests on the way?
They are not in the limelight right now. But they are still in the wings, watching and sometimes intervening. With both PASOK and SYRIZA heading into leadership races that will determine their future course, how are ex-leaders of the two parties “reading” public sentiment?
Some voters still believe in the possibility of a coalition. They argue that if socialist PASOK and leftist SYRIZA join forces, they could fill the gap left in the center-left. As both parties look for a new leadership, there is no way to predict which will have the upper hand.
Some have high hopes for Haris Doukas at PASOK, others are preparing for a comeback by Alexis Tsipras at SYRIZA, while there are many who believe that with SYRIZA facing a new split and New Democracy fast losing public support, PASOK stands to emerge as the big winner regardless of the outcome.
But what do the “exes” – three former prime ministers and one former deputy prime minister – think? What do they want and what do they fear?
Alexis Tsipras
Silently ‘doing my time’
If there is one name among the four that is discussed almost daily – either with hope or with a curse – as the former leader who could come back to unite the center-left, it is the former prime minister and ex-president of SYRIZA.
Although the painting of two bulls against a blood-red background that once adorned his office at SYRIZA headquarters has found a new home in the spacious sitting room of the institute he founded on downtown Athens’ Amalias Avenue, no one truly believes that it or its owner have really made themselves comfortable there.
From the very first event of the Alexis Tsipras Institute, shortly after the European elections, the message was clear. Speaking at the International Conference for Peace and Sustainable Growth in June, which was attended by numerous figures from the European and Greek center-left and left, Tsipras spoke in favor of a convergence of forces in the region, following in the wake of the New Popular Front in France. Tacitly but clearly, SYRIZA’s natural leader declared his presence.
Since then, SYRIZA has been torn apart by unprecedented in-fighting and toxicity – and dropping lower and lower in public opinion polls. This unraveling has also severely hampered the former prime minister’s ability to keep a distance from developments inside the party and resulted in the cancellation of new events the institute had been planning. SYRIZA is not only losing strength, it is on the verge of total collapse, and this threatens to tarnish Tsipras’ legacy.
The former prime minister understands that Stefanos Kasselakis, who was deposed just a year after being elected to SYRIZA’s leadership, tapped party supporters’ need for something new. In particular, he took advantage of Tsipras’ decision to stay on the sidelines. At the party congress in February, Tsipras surprised everyone by proposing new party elections. His call was rejected.
Now it seems that he does not intend to support any specific candidate in the upcoming leadership race. However, he remains a SYRIZA MP and remains critical of those who decided to leave the party over differences with Kasselakis. Many claim that he is pulling the strings of the so-called “Group of 87,” which is backing MP Sokratis Famellos for party president. Media call them the “Tsipras Guard.” Associates of the former prime minister reject this term. This group expresses a significant section of SYRIZA, which is opposed to the notion of a party that revolves around its leader, as Kasselakis would have it.
However, as Tsipras tells his associates, he feels that he has to stay out of such political squabbling. He likes to tell them that he is “doing his time.” A year ago, he took responsibility for the party’s defeat in the double election of May and June 2023 and resigned; his former and current comrades, both those who left and those who stayed but were in different camps within the party, continue to try to justify their actions.
Tsipras has expressed profound disappointment at the developments inside SYRIZA, which he transformed from a small protest party into a governing force before he left when it dropped back down to 20% of the vote. He found out the hard way that many of the people he relied on lack principles, values or content.
He feels the need to stay away from the frontline of political action, but is aware that he will have to break his silence at some point. He stresses that his goal is to contribute to the public debate with proposals and positions on the high stakes in Greece, Europe and the wider region. His institute is his vehicle for doing so.
However, he can hardly expect to continue playing this role when the messages he sends often have a double meaning. In his speech last week accepting an award for the Prespa Agreement, he stressed that young people “refuse to follow the dominant narrative that invites them to choose their principles and values by scrolling down screens… They seek seriousness, substance, not image,” he said. It is hard to hear such words without getting a mental image of the person who succeeded him at SYRIZA’s helm.
It seems that Tsipras does not intend to support any candidate. However, he remains a SYRIZA MP and, as far as those who left the party are concerned, he insists that their move was wrong
George Papandreou
The celebrations in Athens and the ‘Strasbourg gang’
It was October 15, 2023, the evening of the second round of the municipal elections. George Papandreou did not hide his joy in front of the camera. “If we unite the progressive forces behind a person with knowledge, potential and vision, change can happen,” the former prime minister and president of PASOK.
It was shortly after the announcement of Haris Doukas’ victory as Athens mayor. Papandreou was among the first to congratulate him, along with SYRIZA candidate Costas Zachariadis, who had backed his PASOK rival in the second round.
Papandreou went on to speak of “an important message to the country’s progressive forces.” Although he has not expressed a preference for the next leader of PASOK (unlike his brother Nikos, who is a vocal supporter of MP Pavlos Geroulanos), it is clear that he would like someone who can unite the forces of the progressive camp, and would also like to play a role – though not a leading one – in this partnership.
It hasn’t been that long since Tsipras accused him of “outdoing Thatcher and Pinochet,” of speaking the language of the creditors and of defaming the country by talking about corruption. George Papandreou, for his part, accused Tsipras of burdening the country with the third, unnecessary, memorandum. Now all that is in the past – forgotten. The two former prime ministers hang out together on their trips to the Council of Europe and like to talk about the future of the center-left.
The convergence between the two was further strengthened, they say, after Tsipras started attacking what had been a “sacred cow” for SYRIZA: the government of ex-conservative prime minister Kostas Karamanlis, which was widely blamed for the country’s bankruptcy, though not explicitly by the leftist leader. Despite denials of there being an agreement between them regarding the next day in the center-left, it is clear that Tsipras’ and Papandreou’s political ideas on the future of Greece and Europe are identical in many respects.
References to the past have now been reduced to pithy comments like the one made from the podium of the Tsipras Institute conference in June. “If Hollande were here, we’d have a Hollandreou panel, Alexis,” Papandreou said (playing with a term Tsipras had used when criticizing him), while Tsipras below gave a smiling thumbs-up.
At the same congress, Papandreou again openly advocated a coalition of parties, citing the French example of the joint progressive forces that form the New Popular Front.
Evangelos Venizelos
A new social contract rather than nostalgia
Former deputy prime minister Evangelos Venizelos has expressed doubts about the possibility of a coalition of center-left forces, even if the parties manage to overcome their ideological differences.
As he pointed out in a recent interview, the current electoral system does not grant bonus seats to coalitions, although he believes it should for the purpose of electoral equality. In practical terms, this means that even if a center-left coalition comes first in the next elections and conservative New Democracy comes second, the bonus seats would go to the second party.
Venizelos is following the developments on the ground closely and has also put on hold events and conferences of the “Circle of Ideas” (Kyklos Ideon) initiative he’s part of. He too is trying to stay out of the infighting at PASOK as it prepares to choose a new leader.
However, at a celebration for PASOK’s 50th anniversary at Zappeio Hall in Athens, Venizelos called on the party to propose a new social contract and to convince the voters that it can implement it. The slogan “PASOK, those were the years” is unlikely to make it a leading force, with Venizelos noting that “it should not be a party of nostalgia, but of the future.”
During the financial crisis, he used to say that PASOK would rise again, along with the country. This has not happened so far because, he argues, “the precondition for this would be to highlight its role in saving the country and what conditions need to be met for a substantial and lasting return to normality.”
Costas Simitis
Highlighting the opportunity
At PASOK’s event commemorating the 50th anniversary of the September 3 Declaration, something former prime minister Costas Simitis said stood out: “The progressive world is looking for a way out so that it can hope again… the possibilities are not infinite.”
Simitis’ time as prime minister has been described by many as the last coherent example of the “center-left” in Greece, attracting figures from the left. For others, however, it was defined by neoliberal policies that are rejected by the left.
Simitis has not intervened in party affairs for some time now, nor has he taken a position on the upcoming PASOK elections. But many are repeating his phrase as PASOK’s big gamble once a leader is chosen.
“Today more than ever, the progressive world is demanding answers,” Simitis said, clearly conveying the message that PASOK has one – perhaps its last – chance to become a party with enough clout to govern again and to unite the center-left.
