Once upon a time, there was a party

The famous phrase uttered by the late premier and PASOK leader Andreas Papandreou in 1986 when he expelled then-minister Gerasimos Arsenis from the party after a critical speech the latter gave in Karditsa, has gone down in history: “With his actions, Mr Arsenis has removed himself from the party.”

This same sentence was also used by SYRIZA leader Stefanos Kasselakis to announce that he is expelling veteran lawmaker Stefanos Tzoumakas. As Karl Marx would say, history repeats itself, “first as tragedy, second as farce.”

Andreas Papandreou had the power to expel PASOK officials. Can Stefanos Kasselakis do the same in SYRIZA?

The president of SYRIZA’s disciplinary council, Antonis Kotsakas, made it clear recently that the ethics committee (to which Tzoumakas was referred by Kasselakis, after imitating Papandreou) answers only to the party congress, as it is the only body that has been elected by it.

At the same time, he emphasized that the leader of a party has the right to decide on expulsions; however, “this decision is an evaluative one and does not bind anyone.”

A good question at this point is whether all these expulsions of party heavyweights announced by Kasselakis while in the United States (first Tzoumakas, and then Dimitris Vitsas, Panos Skourletis and Nikos Filis) will actually be approved. If the ethics committee dismisses them, what will Kasselakis’ next move be in the face of such an institutional challenge?

But before we get there, we are on the eve of another big battle: Effie Achtsioglou – who was defeated by Kasselakis in the second round of SYRIZA’s leadership race – has broken her silence. In a statement issued jointly with party officials Alexis Haritsis and Nasos Iliopoulos, she said that the situation “is past alarming; the party’s disintegrating,” and requested an emergency meeting of the Political Secretariat. The party leadership responded by convening the Executive Office on Thursday afternoon. The meeting will be attended by Kasselakis (who will have returned from the US) and Achtsioglou. Will the latter question Kasselakis’ leadership?

The party is certainly disintegrating. We are seeing separate individuals, not a unified party. We see and hear people clashing, treading on a broken union that used to be a party. Imitating Andreas Papandreou is fine, but in 1986, PASOK was powerful and popular. On the contrary, SYRIZA has fallen into disrepute and is headed for dissolution.