The (il)legitimacy of Stefanos Kasselakis
Stefanos Kasselakis was elected SYRIZA’s leader by a comfortable majority nearly a year ago, on September 24. He dealt deftly with an attempt to overthrow him just five months later at the party’s congress. His candidacy for the post was not forced on the party by some shadowy interests – on the contrary, it suited several cadres (Pavlos Polakis, notably) who sensed an opportunity to hitch their failing political fates to the chariot of the mysterious young hopeful. Neither they, nor Kasselakis himself, expected him to win the leadership contest.
Today, his former sponsors are in the lead of the campaign to defenestrate him. Why is there so much questioning of a leader who was elected by the party base and had his mandate renewed at the party congress? What gives the doubters the right to ignore the will of voters and delegates? Most likely, the answer lies in the fact that the party cadres never believed that Kasselakis was their legitimate leader. They saw him as an instrument to save themselves, only to decide that the shiny object that they grabbed onto was not a lifebuoy but a millstone.
“Legitimacy” (or the “right to speak,” as a leading member of an all-powerful PASOK government in the 1980s put it) is the bedrock of our political scene, the benchmark by which we evaluate in advance the validity of whatever we hear or see. Of course, this bedrock shifts all the time, depending on everyone’s position and ambitions. In instances such as Kasselakis’, when new leaders are not a product of the party machinery, the cadres (and their rivals in other parties) see them as parachutists, arrivistes who have not bled for the party.
They will tolerate them only as long as they secure access to power now or in the near future. In this way, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, too, finds himself up against former prime ministers and their courtiers, who, despite their glaring failures in the past, act like owners of the party, as the only “real New Democrats,” who tolerate the foreign body (for now). Then there are the technocrats, like Lucas Papademos in Greece, and Mario Monti and Mario Draghi in Italy, who were chosen in accordance with their constitutions to carry burdens that elected politicians could not. They were rejected by the politicians, without the latter managing the situation any better.
Of course, politicians who fight elections have a right to object to the appointment of unelected technocrats, even though they themselves may need to call on them when at an impasse. What happens, though, when the elected officials turn out to be incapable, and there are no easy solutions? If there are no capable successors in their parties, would it not be good to be able to call on someone from outside to join the game, to end the deadlock? Let’s not forget that over a century ago, the exhausted political system of Athens called on Eleftherios Venizelos to lead Greece out of a political stalemate. They chose him on the strength of his reputation as a revolutionary on Crete (which had not yet joined Greece). They may have seen him as a temporary solution, but they got more than they bargained for. With vigor, with strong domestic policies and dynamic diplomacy, Venizelos dominated politics for decades until his death in 1936.
Kasselakis (who is no Venizelos, by any means) was elected leader precisely because no one knew who he was nor what he would do, because the majority of members and supporters of SYRIZA wanted new blood and new policies. In less than a year, it became evident that Kasselakis possessed neither past achievements, nor a serious policy, apart from SYRIZA’s already bankrupt one. His greatest mistake, though, was to think that the institution of party leader would be enough to protect him, when those around him decided that his relentless incoherence damages their personal interests. Because they have not bestowed legitimacy on anyone to do that.
