With Olga Gerovassili completing the cycle of MP resignations from SYRIZA, the era in which the party’s headquarters played a significant role in the country’s political landscape is also drawing to a close. Even if a new parliamentary group leader is elected tomorrow morning, nothing will ever be the same for those who believed in Greece’s left-wing party.
Read also: SYRIZA: Resignations shrink the room for the leadership election — the process takes place on Saturday, July 18
Rena Douro and Pavlos Polakis are nonetheless expected to compete tomorrow for the votes of the MPs who have remained in the party. Barring any dramatic last-minute developments, the MP for Western Athens is expected to secure the leadership, as her own vote — combined with those of her supporters — will give her the edge over Pavlos Polakis. She is set to receive the votes of Christos Giannoulis, Elena Akrita, Theophilos Xanthopoulos, and Yannis Amanatidis. All indications suggest that Nikos Pappas and Giorgos Papailou will back Pavlos Polakis.
Yesterday, however, Rena Douro declined to engage with calls from circles close to Pavlos Polakis urging her to withdraw from the leadership race, stating that she does not respond to “circles.” She further added: “I did not put myself forward for the parliamentary group. This emerged out of a genuinely difficult situation for SYRIZA, for left-wing voters, and for the Left as a whole. I am responding to a need.” She continued: “We are in an informal pre-election period. I am ready to get my hands dirty and put the collective interest first. In 2014, I did not put myself forward for the Attica Region governorship — a candidacy everyone else refused to take on. I resigned my parliamentary seat, even though I didn’t have to, and for the first time we achieved a left-wing victory in the country’s largest region.” She confirmed that she will stand as a candidate for the leadership of SYRIZA’s parliamentary group.
Christos Giannoulis, who is backing Rena Douro, expressed hope in his statements that they would elect a parliamentary group leader and convene the Central Committee to map out their next steps. “It would be deeply disappointing for SYRIZA-PS if no effort were made to restart. A party is sent home by the people, and that verdict is delivered at elections — not through opinion polls. At this moment, anyone pushing things toward unprecedented and extraordinary situations is effectively supporting a plan to dissolve SYRIZA,” he said.
It should also be noted that yesterday, 63 Central Committee members issued a joint statement announcing their resignation, noting that “we cannot remain bystanders in a process where the minority attempts, at will, to bypass the party’s constitution and lead the party toward a split.”
At the same time, significant attention was drawn to an informal briefing published yesterday by SYRIZA, in which the party launched its first direct attack against Alexis Tsipras. Given that the party currently has neither a president nor a secretary-general, the release of this statement sparked considerable debate over who ultimately authorized it. Party headquarters attributed it to the Political Secretariat, though many observers saw the hand of Pavlos Polakis, Nikos Pappas, and Yannis Boulekos behind the move.
“Sources” within the Political Secretariat argued that resigning MPs must hand their seats back to SYRIZA, while also posing a public question to the Greek Left Alliance and personally to Alexis Tsipras: “Will the MPs who have now declared independence stand as candidates on the Greek Left Alliance’s ballot in the next general election?” They further added that “if the answer is yes, this will confirm the political assessment that the successive declarations of independence were not isolated personal choices, but part of a premeditated plan of political destabilization and dissolution of SYRIZA-PS. Citizens have the right to know whether what was presented as an ‘individual act of responsibility’ was in fact the antechamber of a pre-decided political realignment.” They concluded by stating that “the leadership of the Greek Left Alliance cannot keep avoiding an answer to such a critical political question. Transparency toward citizens is an obligation for everyone.”
