Educating Stefanos Kasselakis
He came out of nowhere and was elected leader of the official opposition. He promised a vague “Greek dream.” He yoked together his party’s failed policy of all-out confrontation with his novel way of doing things. And now Stefanos Kasselakis is battling loudly against the quicksand of our country’s political culture. Whether he manages to hold on to the leadership of SYRIZA or fails, the undoubtedly talented and – as he declared – hasty Kasselakis will have learned one of the basic rules of our public life: getting elected is the easy part; succeeding is hard. Because Kasselakis adheres to the American credo “move fast and break things, he believed – and perhaps persists in doing so – that it is natural for the old, the failed, the broken to give way to what is new, different, stronger. This, however, applies to nature, not to our country’s exceptional ecosystem.
Stefanos Kasselakis is indeed different. And this difference (and sometimes only the appearance of difference) highlights the nature of Greek politics – the rules and practices which form the norm. His election from an electoral base comprising long-time party supporters and “two-euro members” (those who registered just in time to vote), is not an innovation, as PASOK and New Democracy beat SYRIZA to it. However, the fact that he won without anyone knowing him, without “prior service” in the party, without being famous because of a family connection or other form of “celebrity,” were enough to make him feel that he had a direct bond with every party member, without any need for the party hierarchy. But this “direct” link with the members is simply the continuation of tradition, where every party is simply a vehicle for its leader, and its institutions are at his service.
Kasselakis’s lack of a political base (as a candidate and then as leader) allowed various cadres to offer him their support in a move to gain greater influence in the party. Seeing him hew his own course, they now want to teach him a lesson. “Some people think that they could have the foreigner, the youngster, in their pocket. That they would have a leader who was a straw man, that they would wield power by proxy,” Kasselakis raged at the start of party congress on Thursday. The leader may reject the effort to control him, but his remaining in office will depend less on what he wants than on whether he has had enough time to acquire enough followers in the party to support him. Do enough people believe that he is capable of preventing the party’s disintegration and, in the not-too-distant future, leading it to the spoils of power?
In our leader-centric political system, the leader must have the credibility provided by a relationship with older notables (whether blood relations or by their being “given the ring” of succession), by their successes in politics or their prior life, and a powerful message (“Change,” “Relief,” “Modernization,” and so on), which, however, must come at the right time to be effective. All this, though, is useless without a powerful, cynical and effective “machine” which neutralizes rivals, controls the narrative and “buries” mistakes. The leader needs a strong political base, access to news media and powerful financial backing. None of this comes cheap.
SYRIZA’s congress these days will show what forces Kasselakis has on his side, who his rivals are and how powerful they are. All of us will see, once again, that political practice which is based on all-out confrontation swallows all in its path.
