A strategy for defeat
PASOK chief Nikos Androulakis sought to clarify his plans for the socialist party at a meeting of its central committee on Saturday, indicating that he sees the party in a progressive coalition with leftist SYRIZA. “Our battle will be victorious,” he said. “We have a duty to make PASOK a force for change once more; a river of modern, progressive ideas that will overturn the establishment; that will send [ruling] New Democracy back into the opposition and form a progressive government in which PASOK will be the protagonist; a government that will in no way resemble the Tsipras-Kammenos episode,” he said referring to SYRIZA chief Alexis Tsipras who formed a coalition with Panos Kammenos and his nationalist Independent Greeks party in 2015-19.
Naturally, Androulakis is very annoyed about discovering that his private telephone was being surveilled by the National Intelligence Service and by the undignified stance adopted by the government, which neither apologized nor took the initiative to inform the PASOK leader why and by whom he was being spied on. Nevertheless, the strategy of a political party should not be shaped by its leader’s personal issues and Androulakis’ overtures to SYRIZA will alienate voters, seeing that public opinion polls have shown that a large part of PASOK’s supporters do not want to hear anything about a partnership with the leftists.
They believe that Tsipras and SYRIZA have unfairly maligned and tried to destroy PASOK by laying the first bailout memorandum at the former ruling party’s doorstep. They remember the disparaging way the leftists spoke of the party that assumed the heavy political cost of saving the country from bankruptcy, even though they went on to sign a third – and unnecessary – memorandum with Greece’s international creditors after the insane, six-month negotiations of 2015 that nearly saw Greece go back to the drachma.
What’s more, the latest polls also show that a PASOK-SYRIZA government would not be viable without the support of the radical left MeRA25 and the Greek Communist Party (KKE). If PASOK is outright excluding the possibility of a coalition with the ruling conservatives, it will push a lot of its voters who want to spare the country further turmoil into voting for Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis so the New Democracy party can form a one-party government after the second round of voting. It is also giving Mitsotakis an excuse not to engage in meaningful discussion with PASOK after the first round, as the socialists will have already closed themselves off to the possibility of an agreement.
