Two to challenge Androulakis for PASOK leadership
The current mayor of Athens and an MP and former Culture Minister announced Sunday they will challenge current PASOK leader Nikos Androulakis in an October contest.
Mayor of Athens Haris Doukas, 44, and MP Pavlos Geroulanos, 58, announced their candidacies for the socialist party’s leadership at a Central Political Committee meeting Sunday.
At the meeting, Androulakis, 45, proposed that the leadership contest, not scheduled to take place until the end of 2025, be advanced to October 6 this year. His proposal was accepted. A second round will take place October 13, if no candidate obtains the absolute majority of votes.
Androulakis faced strong criticism after the June 9 election for the European Parliament when PASOK failed to overtake SYRIZA as the second largest party. He himself had said such a result would be a failure.
Although PASOK was the only of the top three parties to increase its vote share in the latest election, the result (12.79%, to SYRIZA’s 14.92% and ruling New Democracy’s 28.31%) disappointed followers who see the party’s rise from the depths to which it has fallen during the country’s severe financial crisis as too slow. Failing to overtake SYRIZA rankled especially, given the latter party’s continuing turmoil under its new leader, Stefanos Kasselakis.
Doukas, a professor of energy policy and management created perhaps the biggest surprise at last fall’s local elections by beating incumbent Athens mayor Kostas Bakoyannis, a nephew of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, with the support of SYRIZA voters in the second round and a massive abstention by centrist and conservative voters. But Doukas’ grab for the party leadership so soon after his election and his insistence that he can combine the jobs of party leader and the capital’s mayor have resulted in some pointed criticism.
Geroulanos, the scion of two storied Athens families is still viewed by many as an unlikely socialist, even though his ties with the party – or, more accurately, former leader George Papandreou – stretch back more than three decades. His mild demeanor, combined with some clear ideas of where he wants to take the party, have made him few enemies. In the last national election, he defeated a party stalwart, Costas Skandalidis, to earn the socialists’ single seat in the difficult Athens A multi-seat constituency. Although he is starting as the outsider, this lack of antagonists could serve him well in the contest.
