A fierce war broke out in the center-left space with the phrase by Alexis Tsipras “either us or no one or Mitsotakis”. Although he explained (on Skai) that he was referring to the political program ELAS has compared to the others, the objective possibilities (polls) and the ability to govern (“I have experience”), H. Trikoupi reacted fiercely: it accused Mr. Tsipras of arrogant behavior and charged him that “after ‘Mitsotakis or chaos’ we now got ‘Tsipras or chaos’”.According to the malicious tongues, Mr. Tsipras went on the offensive by setting out the political and electoral stakes because ELAS appears stagnant in the polls. According to his interlocutors, the dynamic style he now projects (and will project in the coming period) is due to the fact that the country has entered a long pre-election period and, therefore, positions must be clear and framed as dilemmas.
“If there is political change, it will come with the one who brings it. Either us or no one or Mitsotakis. Life brings dilemmas. Is there someone who can beat Mitsotakis? If there is someone, it is the one who is closest to him, who has governing experience. A protest vote is all well and good, but at the end of the day the dilemmas will arise and they will be harsh,” he said characteristically.
As for the polls, he reversed the argument about stagnation: “As feasible as it is for K. Mitsotakis to go from 28-29 to 37, which is what self-reliance requires, (that is, to gain) 9-10 points, it is just as feasible for those 9-10 points to pass to us. In politics, if polls produced the result of elections, we would not go to vote.”
In this context he also placed the “next day” of the elections, as to the question of whom ELAS will cooperate with he repeated curtly: “we will seek and exhaust every possibility by addressing the entire spectrum of democratic parties on the basis of our plan. If this is not feasible, we will go to elections again. The second elections will resemble June 2012 or the municipal elections that provide a solution for governance.”
And to the reasonable, journalistically, question of why he considers himself the most suitable, he replied: “because we have governing experience even in the most difficult conditions. However you want to put it, no one else has it”…
Having reminded, in the recent past, of PASOK’s refusal to cooperate with him in 2023 together with the then SYRIZA, although simple proportional representation gave a strong weapon for progressive governance, Mr. Tsipras constantly repeats that he will not make the same mistake, which is why he talks about second ballot boxes.
He is also attempting a measured discourse toward PASOK, looking mainly to the citizens who once voted for it and are now waiting to see which party has greater capabilities “to bring down” the Mitsotakis government, but also to govern in favor of society.
“We are not addressing the leadership of H. Trikoupi nor the entirety of its cadre base, but the 20-25% who did not vote for PASOK again after 2009 (ed. note: then it had received 44%), supported SYRIZA in 2015 and, a large part of them, in 2019, but now are ‘on the couch and waiting’,” ELAS officials say.
In this effort, they say, lies Mr. Tsipras’s phrase yesterday “every half point that PASOK gets, I am happy”, so as to strengthen the impression that for him and his party “with PASOK we are not opponents but competitors”.
At the same time, however… he slaughtered the “competitors” with cotton wool, adding: “For three years ‘the needle was stuck, will it become unstuck now?”, referring to Pavlos Geroulanos’s well-known line about the stuck needle.
PASOK: War to the bitter end with …the competitor
PASOK officials read, completely differently of course, the interview of their… opponent (and not “competitor”), since the big - and existential - bet for its leadership is to move poll-wise into second place before the year is out. Otherwise, as its officials say, “if ELAS’s second place becomes entrenched and, indeed, with a large difference from us, the game will be lost”.
Beyond the rest, they speak of disparaging references by Mr. Tsipras both toward their party (with the “stuck needle”) and toward Nikos Androulakis: “Now will the needle become unstuck? I wish the man would”.
“After ‘Mitsotakis or chaos’ today (ed. note: yesterday) we got the dilemma ‘Tsipras or chaos’,” PASOK replied in an official announcement it issued after Mr. Tsipras’s interview.
And it continued: “It was posed with excessive arrogance and self-admiration by a politician who was defeated as prime minister and as leader of the official opposition, by the largest margin ever recorded in the years of the Metapolitefsi, ‘achieving’ the unbelievable: instead of the strength of the first party decreasing, the second party collapsed at the ballot box”.
After also recalling the coalition government with Panos Kammenos, PASOK added: “Parties of cliques and closed systems of power that act as traffic wardens of interests, can neither clash with the establishment, nor change the course of the country,” referring to the well-known accusation hurled by H. Trikoupi that the former prime minister’s new venture is backed by interests and oligarchs.
As for Mr. Tsipras’s argument that PASOK did not exploit the gap he left with his resignation from the presidency of SYRIZA in 2023 and his withdrawal from the central political scene, PASOK officials and Mr. Androulakis himself answer with a question: “who created this gap?”.
Meaning, in their discussions, that the disintegrative situations in SYRIZA over the last three years functioned as a ‘weight’ overall for the progressive space. “Due to the continuous splits in SYRIZA, PASOK suddenly found itself in the position of the official opposition and fought alone in Parliament on all the major issues,” they say characteristically.
As a strong weapon, finally, they present the “structured PASOK with elected bodies, organizations, roots in society, an active parliamentary group and program” against the ‘leader-centric ELAS with appointed bodies and absence from Parliament”.
As everything shows, the war (or the “competition”) between ELAS-PASOK or between Tsipras-Androulakis has just begun to intensify and “we will hear a lot” until the polling curtain falls for 2026.