The headaches within PASOK over whether—and with whom—it will cooperate after the elections show no signs of abating, despite the silence or the neutral stance that Ch. Trikoupi has chosen to adopt toward supporters of one faction or the other.On the surface, the announcement by party official and former Secretary General of Justice (until 2015) Marinos Skandamis that he would not be running as a PASOK candidate in Achaea came as a bolt from the blue. However, reports had long suggested that he had been questioning the party’s adherence to the conference decision (“we will not cooperate with New Democracy”) and viewed Alexis Tsipras’s ELAS as a way forward for progressive alliances.
He himself makes no mention of the newly formed party, but, after emphasizing that he cannot guarantee to his supporters that PASOK will not cooperate with New Democracy after the election, he “bids farewell” to his former comrades in PASOK by noting: “There’s no way we’ll lose touch, since our paths and struggles are shared.”
The key point of Mr. Skandamis’s statement is: “I gave it time, hoping that after the conference’s decision against any coalition government with New Democracy, things would take a different course.
However, I regret to see that the conference’s message is being obscured by deliberate, systematic tactics that allow them to reopen the discussion of post-election alliances in every direction, thereby preventing the formation of a common goal for a truly progressive government. Although partings are not easy emotionally, logically I cannot support such a candidacy on my part.”
Political change (also) with New Democracy?
Interestingly, Mr. Skandamis was confirmed—in advance—by another PASOK official and close associate of Anna Diamantopoulou, Giorgos Sekallion.
In a social media post on Saturday, Sekallion wrote: “Any situation in which New Democracy is not a self-sufficient government essentially constitutes a political change.”
He concluded that “PASOK’s goal, therefore, should be ‘victory’ and the broadest possible ‘political change’ for the benefit of the majority of citizens.”
According to other party officials, who oppose the prospect of a new coalition government with New Democracy, this stance “goes a step further” than Ms. Diamantopoulou’s well-known position that PASOK’s post-election stance will depend on the outcome of the vote. Or, as she has emphasized, quoting Mitterrand, “between before the elections and after the elections lie the elections themselves.”