George Tsipras has resigned from SYRIZA. As he stated in a related letter, the former MP of the party during 2019-23 is also resigning from party membership, as he refers to a party that has “long ago passed from the unreliability that was reflected in the dramatic shrinkage of the 2023 elections, to disrepute”.
As he mentions in his lengthy letter, “there is no doubt that the Kasselakis period and the one after it was the tombstone, but the crisis was already deep. SYRIZA’s refusal, all wings of SYRIZA, to deal with the causes of the crisis predetermined the subsequent course.” He also “unleashed fire” on the party’s governance period, noting that SYRIZA “failed and there was never a serious assessment so as not to affect persons and political choices”.
“We continued in the 2019-23 period to defend wrong choices and failures of the governance period, feeding the anti-SYRIZA front and damaging ourselves,” he noted, while regarding the Kasselakis presidency period, he pointed out that “he remained 11 months (in the presidency) because half and more members of the Political Secretariat and the executive staff tolerated and supported a completely arbitrary, anti-democratic, anti-party operation, coveting better position and more power under President Kasselakis”.
“The problem of a political function that does not unify or oppose different political but personal pursuits and strategies, dominated throughout the period from 2015 to 2023. It promotes incompetence and does not highlight political cadres. Even PASOK managed to highlight more new cadres than SYRIZA. It is a political function that promotes the individual instead of the collective and politics,” he emphasized, while regarding any new center-left venture, he characteristically stated: “If the worst political function, which was inherited mainly from the old Coalition and worsened in governmental SYRIZA, with absence of politics itself, or with self-reference substituting politics, is reproduced in any new venture, with or without ‘center-left unity’, its outcome is predetermined”.
George Tsipras: His resignation letter from SYRIZA
The resignation letter follows:
Resignation Letter
To the OM Magoula and NE Western Attica
I inform you of my formal departure as a member of SYRIZA-PS. As you know, since late 2024 I have ceased to actively participate in party procedures and in my speech at the CE 24/3/2025 I declared that it was my last participation in the body. It is self-evident that this choice of mine has nothing to do with comrades in Western Attica and the thousands of members from all over Greece whom I met and worked with over the previous 20 years. Moreover, the overwhelmingly largest part has distanced itself, as was shown at the congress.
The image of the party that has been formed in the consciousness of most former SYRIZA-PS voters is that what mainly interests many of its prominent cadres is the reproduction of positions. SYRIZA has long ago passed from the unreliability that was reflected in the dramatic shrinkage of the 2023 elections, to disrepute: it is not that people simply do not believe that SYRIZA can constitute an alternative prospect, but they do not even believe about many of its prominent cadres that they believe what they say. Everything seems like a game. Are they wrong?
Two observations to clarify my own position on SYRIZA’s degradation.
1. With the defeat in the 2023 elections, SYRIZA was already in deep crisis. There is no doubt that the Kasselakis period and the one after it was the tombstone, but the crisis was already deep. SYRIZA’s refusal, all wings of SYRIZA, to deal with the causes of the crisis predetermined the subsequent course.
SYRIZA could have done much during the 2015-2019 governance period even within the memorandum. I refer to the period after the September 2015 elections. It did much less than it could. How different SYRIZA’s governance was from that of ND, whether the country exited the memoranda or whether management was honest compared to today’s kleptocracy does not constitute an excuse. The basic requirement was to chart a different prospect for the country and the social majority, different from pre-memorandum politics and different from today’s, to convince a social majority that such a prospect is feasible. In the economy, in foreign policy, in the state. In this basic requirement SYRIZA failed, and there was never a serious assessment so as not to affect persons and political choices. It did not fail because we were under memorandum until 2018. Nor did it fail only due to incompetence but mainly because there was not the required political will and intention for charting such a prospect, let alone planning.
We continued in the 2019-23 period to defend wrong choices and failures of the governance period, feeding the anti-SYRIZA front and damaging ourselves. Self-reference took the place of a serious assessment and charting of a corrective course. The 32% of 2019 and the expectation then of thousands and thousands of people for the formation of a large progressive formation (announcement by Alexis Tsipras on election night) was the best starting point for such a corrective course that never came, while the capabilities existed. SYRIZA in 2019-23 objectively had the possibility to redefine itself and change the progressive space map. The majority of the social and party base wanted it but at leadership level SYRIZA never addressed it seriously. I do not refer to the Umbrella which had its own minority view but to the rest and ultimately to the whole.
The 2019-23 period is the only one for which some assessment was made later and I will not elaborate. The 32% of 2019 was only a second chance that people generously gave despite the major complaints they justifiably had. It was disappointed and punishment and collapse in the 2023 elections followed. Indicatively, it is an open secret that the views expressed by G. Katrougalos on the fateful Wednesday before the elections were majority among an executive staff that never seriously dealt with what was right and what was not. This was an established “culture” of SYRIZA operation at leadership level.
2. Substantial assessment in SYRIZA did not exist even for the Kasselakis period, continuing the tradition of a party that for ten years now, since it won the 2015 elections, systematically refuses to assess and correct even the most obvious.
Personally I have whatever responsibilities befall me for the elevation to the presidency under conditions of deep crisis of an extreme case of political fraudster. This does not mean that the victory of his opponent answered SYRIZA’s deep crisis. Quite the opposite. It represented the reproduction of negative SYRIZA characteristics that had alienated half the 2019 voters and guaranteed further shrinkage. The obvious support from media centers was also something unprecedented for SYRIZA. The victory of someone who came out of nowhere was people’s refusal to continue SYRIZA as before. The electoral evaporation of New Left confirms it was part of the problem of the deep 2023 crisis.
In the Congress positions various mistakes are mentioned after Alexis Tsipras’s departure. Like the direct election of a new president without previously holding a congress. Like the constitution not providing obvious terms for candidacy emergence. That Kasselakis was underestimated. That members who later formed New Left departed etc, etc. All are known.
Only they deafeningly avoid answering the crucial question, talking about the big elephant in the room: why Kasselakis remained 11 months in SYRIZA leadership. He remained 11 months because half and more members of the Political Secretariat and executive staff tolerated and supported a completely arbitrary, anti-democratic, anti-party operation, coveting better position and more power under President Kasselakis. Let me remind that many of the political “distortions” charged to SYRIZA under Kasselakis had the consent of this executive staff which today maintains roughly the same positions.
The biggest mistake with Kasselakis’s election was not the risk of the first random person but the delusion that the executive staff had limits and criteria on what it was willing to swallow. It was proven that a large part had no such limits! The ship was sinking in self-ridicule and half were seeking better position on the sinking ship. After Kasselakis’s defenestration all together, those against him and those for him, as if nothing happens, continued “unitedly”. In the congress positions there is no word about all this.
In other words, the only political agreement that appears externally to connect a large part of the senior executive staff is “every man for himself”, with or without Kasselakis. Therefore people are not wrong in how they now treat SYRIZA, nor have they “misunderstood” it. The current danger emerging for parliamentary survival intensifies these degenerative phenomena.
From the beginning, when it was already clear that the only thing that interested Kasselakis was the occupation of a party and nothing else, that is at the latest after New Left’s departure, if there had been information at least to the Central Committee about the inconceivable things happening at the leadership level of arbitrary political operation, the damage would have been at least smaller. And Kasselakis’s defenestration would not appear simply as position securing.
Most party members, absolutely uninformed beyond the President’s public blunders, began to “suspect” what was happening in the upper echelons only at the humiliating February 2024 congress, five whole months after his election. The proposal for elections then was a suicide proposal for obvious reasons.
The problem of a political function that does not unify or oppose different political but personal pursuits and strategies, dominated throughout the period from 2015 to 2023. It promotes incompetence and does not highlight political cadres. Even PASOK managed to highlight more new cadres than SYRIZA. It is a political function that promotes the individual instead of the collective and politics.
For example, it was not only the “53” and later the Umbrella, but also the Members’ Movement or the “Presidentials” who functioned more as pressure groups for position negotiation rather than policy promotion. If politics dominated, many things would have been done differently in 2015-19, and there would have been an overwhelming majority that would impose a corrective SYRIZA course after 2019, overcoming Alexis Tsipras’s indecisiveness. With politics absent, the lack of will and planning for charting a different prospect for the country and social majority does not constitute an inexplicable mystery.
The deep deficit of reorientation of a modern Left when everything around changes is not only a Greek problem and is reflected in its international retreat as well as in adopting convenient, borrowed (usually from liberalism and elites’ Europeanism) and rounded positions that move fewer and fewer people. This does not constitute mitigation or consolation for those who continue to proceed on “autopilot” from the past.
If the worst political function, which was inherited mainly from the old Coalition and worsened in governmental SYRIZA, with absence of politics itself, or with self-reference substituting politics, is reproduced in any new venture, with or without “center-left unity”, its outcome is predetermined.
With respect,
George Tsipras
