Realignment taking place within SYRIZA
The contest for a new leader of the left-wing SYRIZA party has already produced realignments among the party’s several factions and they are probably not over yet.
So far, four people have declared their candidacies: Efi Achtsioglou, the youngest at 38, the only woman and acknowledged early favorite; Euclid Tsakalotos, 63; Nikos Pappas, 47, long seen as former leader Alexis Tsipras’ “alter ego”; and Stefanos Tzoumakas, 77, a longtime socialist official and minister whose candidacy came as a surprise to many.
And there could still be others; according to SYRIZA’s rules for such a contest, candidacies can be submitted at the party congress – called a “standing congress” because the delegates taking part will be those elected to the party’s last congress in 2022 – that will convene on September 3. Sokratis Famellos, the MP who was appointed to lead SYRIZA’s parliamentary group until a new leader is elected refused to rule out the possibility and there could be others, such as the famously abrasive former minister and still MP Pavlos Polakis.
Both Achtsioglou and Tsakalotos are seen to come from the left wing of the party, but the former has consciously reached out across factional lines and, notably, has refused to take a stance on an issue that has divided the party, namely, whether, in the name of a broad appeal, it diluted its radical ideology too much or, on the contrary, whether it is preferable to move toward the center. Tsakalotos, for example, has argued for a clearly leftist party, although he avoids the radical phraseology of others.
Pappas has been the most explicit advocate of an appeal to the center. Speaking to reporters Monday, he said that “if you do not get the centrists on your side, you will never get a chance to implement your political program… there will be no prospect of governance.”
Several of those close to former leader Alexis Tsipras have backed Achtsioglou instead of Pappas; so have several former socialists, whose presence in the party is openly resented by some.
