SYRIZA president Sokratis Famellos clearly supports an alliance with Alexis Tsipras in his proposal to the Political Secretariat, emphasizing that “our parallel paths must converge toward the common goal of a strong progressive pole, with the formation of a programmatic proposal and overcoming divisive lines throughout the progressive space, guided by the interests of the great popular majority and based on leftist ideas and values.”
Famellos: “SYRIZA’s relationship with Tsipras cannot be confrontational”
This position holds particular significance as party members from Koumoundourou have expressed reservations about the stance SYRIZA should maintain toward Tsipras’s new initiative. Specifically, the SYRIZA president, after referring to the country’s political environment, emphasizes: “In this environment, the resignation of former Prime Minister and SYRIZA-PS President Alexis Tsipras from his parliamentary seat constitutes a significant and critical event that objectively produces strong political results and creates new realities and questions that no one can overlook. With Alexis Tsipras as President, SYRIZA built the characteristics and positions of a governing party, governed the country, and overturned four decades of political correlations that had been formed after the Metapolitefsi. Even if different perspectives exist, SYRIZA-PS’s relationship with Alexis Tsipras cannot be confrontational.
Our parallel paths must converge toward the common goal of a strong progressive pole, with the formation of a programmatic proposal and overcoming divisive lines throughout the progressive space, guided by the interests of the great popular majority and based on leftist ideas and values. In the next elections, it is necessary for citizens to have a strong alternative choice against New Democracy. In this great project of progressive space reconstruction, SYRIZA-PS’s role is and must continue to be creative, synthetic, and an accelerator of developments in all fields of political and social advocacy. In Parliament, in local government, in mass spaces, in local communities, in movements. With joint initiatives, actions, interventions that will strengthen progressive positions against right-wing policies and make them a majority current in society.
So the country can finally turn the page with a long-term progressive government with broad popular legitimacy. In his proposal, Sokratis Famellos notes, among other things, that “the country and society are at a critical crossroads in the seventh year of New Democracy governance. The demand for political change becomes majority among Greeks every day that passes, and this necessity for change concerns all major issues. Once again, Kyriakos Mitsotakis chose the downward path of toxicity, tension, and division with the unacceptable and unconstitutional amendment that New Democracy voted for regarding the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Unable to accept his defeat by Panos Routsis’s honest and just struggle, Kyriakos Mitsotakis resorts to authoritarianism and suppression of popular mobilizations. The vast majority of Greek society, which stood by Panos Routsis and all relatives of the Tempe tragedy victims, demanding truth and justice, will practically nullify this wretched amendment.
The agricultural sector continues to face government mockery regarding subsidy payments, with delays and reduced disbursements and risk of resource loss due to the huge blue scandal of OPEKEPE. At the same time, the Mitsotakis government continues its attack on labor by passing yet another anti-worker law that brings 13-hour employment to one employer, instead of reducing working time, collective agreements, wage increases, workplace safety. Simultaneously, it attempts to supposedly tame inflation with mockery measures like price reductions on some codes, instead of zeroing VAT on food and medicines, reducing special consumption tax on fuels, breaking profiteering cartels (energy, refineries, banks) and effectively addressing housing costs, while the National Health System situation remains tragic mainly due to enormous staff shortages. In foreign policy, it is necessary for the country to abandon the predictable and given US ally strategy followed by the Mitsotakis government and return to the active and multidimensional foreign policy it had under the SYRIZA government.
This necessity becomes imperative due to significant developments in our broader region after the fragile ceasefire in Gaza, without prospects for a just Palestinian solution within the UN framework with a two-state solution on 1967 borders and East Jerusalem as the Palestinian state capital, but also after the hopeful electoral result in the Turkish Cypriot community with Tufan Erhurman’s victory that creates positive expectations for a Bizonal Bicommunal Federation solution in Cyprus. The country must turn the page. A progressive Greece with justice, democracy, and sustainable development can and must be the alternative way out. Consequently, developments in the progressive space will determine whether political change is feasible in the next elections. SYRIZA-PS has consistently emphasized the need for progressive forces cooperation for a long time. However, there has been no political will to take substantial convergence steps from other progressive space forces until today. The question, however, remains the governing prospect of the progressive space, and as long as the existing situation is maintained, the only winner is New Democracy, while the far-right danger always lurks.
