Reports that ELAS and PASOK would not lay down their arms until at least the end of the year have been fully borne out.
Tensions rose sharply yesterday, with Alexis Tsipras himself turning up the heat during his speech at a meeting of ELAS’s Political Committee. He:
- Called PASOK’s leaders “naive” for thinking that “if Tsipras lost (ie, in the 2023 election) they would be the alternative”. He recalled that he resigned as his party’s leader immediately after the election and “paved the way for them, in case they could succeed against the Right”, but that for three years they “did nothing”.
- Revived speculation about the post-election alliances PASOK would seek or accept, directly asking whether it could rule out forming another coalition with New Democracy.
Emphatically stressing that he could never govern in coalition “with Kyriakos Mitsotakis or Mr Pierrakakis or Mr Dendias or Mr Venizelos”, he added that others needed to reconsider their political paths, “whether straight or winding”.
On the latter point, he cited a statement made two days ago by Nikos Androulakis that the leader of the largest party should become prime minister.
According to people who have spoken to him, the statement is seen as an implicit acceptance that PASOK would support a coalition government led by the largest party if it failed to win an outright majority.
A sign of the high-profile presence Amalias will seek to establish in the coming period is Alexis Tsipras’s decision to hold a policy congress for ELAS in late January or early February 2027. It will be the newly formed party’s first congress.
This will shift the debate — and the comparisons — to the party’s policy positions over the three-month period considered critical to the battle in the polls.
Pollsters point out, as we have reported, that if ELAS ends the winter ahead of PASOK in the polls, and by a clear margin, the start of the official election campaign could draw progressive voters to Mr Tsipras’s party in large numbers.
The scale of this campaign push is reflected in Mr Tsipras’s decision to visit a different region of the country every week until the Christmas holidays. The tour begins on Monday with a two-day trip to Thessaly.
PASOK: Calm down, Mr Tsipras
Charilaou Trikoupi’s response was immediate and, as ever, forceful. Picking up on another of Mr Tsipras’s remarks — “I did not govern in coalition with New Democracy” — party officials pointed to the SYRIZA-ANEL coalition government.
A formal PASOK statement also said, among other things:
- PASOK took on its patriotic duty to save the country from the brink of collapse, while Mr Tsipras was “whitewashing” New Democracy’s responsibility and deceiving voters with promises of debt relief and tearing up the bailout memorandums.
(On this point, PASOK official Vassia Anastasiou said publicly that she was proud of the New Democracy-PASOK government, prompting a fresh round of clashes. ELAS officials pointed out that LAOS was also part of the coalition in its first phase.)
- If he is looking for New Democracy’s coalition partners, he should look in the mirror and ask himself how he ended up parroting the Mitsotakis government’s neoliberal positions.
- Calm down, Mr Tsipras. You thought economic interests would impose their will on you, but you had not reckoned with the people of the democratic camp. Progressive parties are born among the people, as PASOK was. They are not incubated in the hothouses of cronyism.
The “green” interpretation is that Mr Tsipras is raising the temperature because his party remains stuck in the polls, unlike PASOK, which is gaining ground “slowly but steadily” … though only slightly.
Mr Androulakis is expected to deliver a hard-hitting speech tomorrow at a political event organised by PASOK in Aigaleo to mark the anniversary of the party’s first election victory, under Andreas Papandreou, on 18 October 1981.
SYRIZA: Polakis presses … the button
And amid all this, a new crisis is brewing in SYRIZA, with Pavlos Polakis … pressing the button. As expected — and as we have reported many times — the Cretan MP is expected to raise the question of electing a party leader at today’s meeting of the Central Committee, to end the “collective leadership” interlude (Dourou-Polakis-Pappas).
The argument is that after Famellos resigned in July, it was not considered appropriate to hold an extraordinary congress and leadership elections, because early national elections in the autumn were still being discussed in public.
Since those elections did not take place, he argues, SYRIZA cannot remain leaderless (Rena Dourou is president of the parliamentary group, not the party). A congress and leadership election, by contrast, would provide an excellent springboard for a full-scale outreach to society.
According to reports, Nikos Pappas (secretary), Giannis Boulekos (organisational secretary) and Ms Dourou will oppose Mr Polakis’s proposal, arguing that the process would lead to renewed internal infighting.
Officials aligned with the MP say the others are opposed because they are certain that the leadership election “will make Polakis president”.
The question is how he will respond if his proposal is voted down — whether he will leave the “collective leadership” and remain an ordinary MP, at least for now.