Setbacks for increasingly embattled former PM Alexis Tsipras continued to mount at the beginning of the week on Monday, with a long-time …speechwriter being the latest to abandon the SYRIZA “ship” ahead of snap elections on Sept. 20.

“I cannot fit into the biggest was of a parliamentary victory by the left in all of European, nor the waste of the 62 percent ‘no’ by the Greek people in just an hour,” Thodoris Kollias said in a public statement announcing his departure from the Tsipras team.

Kollias also also acted as an aide to the seven-month radical leftist prime minister of the country over the past few months. The “no” he was referring to was the result of a referendum called by Tsipras on July 6, a “victory” that not only proved pyrrhic for the leftist leader but essentially a boomerang.

Criticism from his more leftist former comrades, who broke off to form the Popular Unity party, was also unending.

A text posted on the Iskra.gr site, which expresses the viewpoints of the far-left and ex minister Panagiotis Lafazanis, charged that the 40-year-old former premier enjoys the support of “vested interests” in the county. Tsipras is also accused of “blackmailing” progressive citizens.

“From the (dilemma) of PASOK or the right to Tsipras or Meimarakis (the conservative ND leader)”, is the title of the article in the virulently anti-capitalist and anti-Euro Iskra.gr.

For the Left Platform, formerly the extreme leftist wing of SYRIZA, the latter party is merely the “pro-memorandum SYRIZA, which employs old-styles ways and means to pilfer citizens’ votes.”