Top SYRIZA officials turn on each other

Following its disastrous showing in the May 21 election, where it lost more than 11 percentage points, main opposition SYRIZA is now talking about preventing Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and his New Democracy party from becoming too powerful by clawing back some of the 20-percentage point gap separating the two big parties.

But a defeat of such magnitude has inevitably given rise to calls for a more collective leadership, if not outright replacement of the leader. And with them have come the first serious clashes among SYRIZA grandees.

On Tuesday, veteran SYRIZA politician Dimitris Papadimoulis, one of the European Parliament’s vice presidents, said in a TV panel that a good first step to getting SYRIZA back on its feet would be to surround Tsipras in the campaign ahead with younger politicians who proved themselves as vote-getters in Sunday’s election. He even mentioned three names – Efi Achtsioglou, Alexis Haritsis and Nasos Iliopoulos.

Papadimoulis’ proposal provoked a fierce response Wednesday from former Attica governor Rena Dourou, who came second to the younger Achtsioglou among SYRIZA candidates in the Western Athens constituency.

To Dourou, Papadimoulis’ proposal was “disgusting, at best,” if not reflecting designs for some kind of party conspiracy. She blasted her former fellow SYRIZA moderate as having stopped attending the top party bodies’ meetings and added that “no one should mention names.” Dourou is also seen as having leadership ambitions.

Nikos Pappas, a former minister and close friend of Tsipras, said that Papadimoulis’ intervention was “totally off-base… in the wrong place and time.” Former health minister Andreas Xanthos also criticized Papadimoulis, but added that “no one can say that [talk about leadership] is a taboo subject after such a negative result.”