SYRIZA makes its next move, appealing to the center

What ought to have been done decisively and systematically by the main opposition since the 2019 elections which brought the conservatives to power will be attempted in the next 30 days.

One look at the people appointed to the new SYRIZA Electoral Committee is enough to see the party’s sharp turn towards the political center. Most of the big names are absent, including old party staples. All the cadres who have been associated with SYRIZA’s tumultuous period between 2012 and 2015 are in a peculiar state of supervision by the party president and his press office. They will not be able to appear in the media without prior permission from the party. In short, they will enter a similar category to former minister Pavlos Polakis, who had been pardoned by leader Alexis Tsipras following a string of controversial remarks, on the condition, we assume, that he minimizes his public appearances and, mainly, his online comments.

If all this doesn’t sound too centrist, consider what is at stake in the June 25 election for Tsipras. The goal is clear: a more moderate and composed platform conveyed by less overexposed cadres that have not been identified so much with the confused statements of recent weeks, in an effort to reassure the centrist audience that voted en masse for New Democracy leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis in May.

The goal is clear: a more moderate and composed platform conveyed by less overexposed cadres

The leadership of the main opposition appears to believe that part of the party’s collapse is due to a problem of communication: “We lost as badly as we did because our positions were not heard.” But the truth is that SYRIZA’s proposals were heard as much as those of the previous government. In fact, some of them were heard all too well. The party’s communications staff made sure that SYRIZA’s proposal to abolish the minimum admission threshold to enter university reached every school yard. The lavish (and supposedly “fully evaluated”) benefits program was on the lips of all party officials at every opportunity.

The reality, then, is that the main opposition did not fail because its program was not so well communicated. It failed because its program reminded us the SYRIZA we voted against in 2019. It failed because after four years in the main opposition, its key priorities for education in 2023 were to abolish the campus police and the minimum admission threshold to enter university.

Now, the party wants to convince us that its proposals may not be enough to make us want SYRIZA to govern us, but they’re good enough to keep it as the main opposition. Voters will respond on June 25.