Stefanos Kasselakis: This is not the end of SYRIZA

The current situation at SYRIZA-Progressive Alliance shows decadence, not the end of the party itself, former party leader Stefanos Kasselakis said in an article published in ‘Documento” newspaper’s Sunday edition” on Sunday.

Kasselakis said he would be present in “the battle of the many against the oligarchy that defends a corrupt government in decline,” but did not clarify whether he planned to submit his candidacy for the party’s leadership.

The main opposition’s former leader said he had turned down proposals to resort to justice after the party’s Central Committee voted him out. “I will not hurt the already hurting people of SYRIZA. The fight will be political,” he wrote, also explaining why he did not found a new party. “I did not leave an easy life and career in the US to come and ask of deputies to follow me and do what others did, shrinking SYRIZA. I gave up my life in order to exist through SYRIZA, to help SYRIZA grow with all my powers.” Terming the party as one that is “deeply engraved in the conscience of a people,” he said he would keep fighting because “SYRIZA does not just have a past, it has a future as well.”

Looking back, Kasselakis wrote about the party’s electoral loss of 2019: “Allow me to say that SYRIZA was not defeated in 2019. When you have been elected to rule as government with 36% and – having gone through fire and brimstone – the people send you to the main opposition seats in Parliament with 32%, it is not a defeat. The message was explicit and personal, aimed at Alexis Tsipras: Change everything in the party, then return. […] The request remains the same by the people of SYRIZA: ‘Change everything.’ And this is so loud that you are not allowed to jump ship.”

The party is at a critical crossroads today, he underlined. “Is it SYRIZA’s decadence? It is. Is it the end of SYRIZA? I am convinced not, that’s why ‘I am here’,” he wrote.

Kasselakis underlined that the party needs to turn into a party and to have a vision. The first will bring the ability to rule as a government, and the second will bring electoral victory. It is time SYRIZA became the most direct-democracy party in Europe, he said, offering a new vision to Greeks – “because as you saw in the debate of candidates for PASOK’s presidency, the light will not come from anywhere else.”