SYRIZA’s president, Stefanos Kasselakis, ultimately did not take up the challenge, as despite the requests from Polakis, Gerovasili, and the ’87’ to appeal to the base for a leadership election, he referred any internal party process to the conference on October 6.
At 15:30, after 1.5 hours, the meeting of SYRIZA’s Political Secretariat at Koumoundourou concluded, conducted in a heated atmosphere with strong opposition to Kasselakis. The party president, speaking last after everyone had made their statements, responded by saying, among other things, that a motion of no confidence against him would harm the party and ‘would liquidate it without offering anything.’ He also said, ‘It would hurt our people, and it would be a major U-turn by the same body (the Political Secretariat) that decided on a statutory congress.’
According to protothema.gr, Mr. Kasselakis, at the end of his speech, persistently asked the MPs to commit that they would not leave the party.
Although earlier there was information circulating that the SYRIZA president would call for elections for the party leadership, he ultimately chose to refer the dissenters to the conference, apparently believing that he controls its composition. It is worth noting that at the conference last February, when Tsipras intervened and requested a new electoral process, Stefanos Kasselakis publicly agreed, saying, ‘Find me an opponent and let’s go,’ but behind the scenes, he instructed the officials who supported him to gather signatures to prevent a new election from the base — and he succeeded.
After these developments, internal opposition members said that Mr. Kasselakis would respond in the same way — that is, by referring to the conference — even if a motion of no confidence against him passes at the Central Committee meeting over the weekend.
The Meeting of the Political Secretariat
Earlier, Olga Gerovasili and Thanasis Theocharopoulos, speaking during the Political Secretariat meeting, requested that Stefanos Kasselakis call for an early internal party election. Pavlos Polakis agreed with these statements and called for an immediate internal party election, stressing that ‘in democracy, there are no dead ends.’
On the other hand, the President of the Parliamentary Group, Nikos Pappas, does not seem to be in favor of a motion of no confidence and, as he said to his associates, ‘we should stop bothering the members,’ adding that there should not be a presidential election.
The Deadlock in Kasselakis’ Proposed Changes
The meeting of the Political Secretariat began shortly before 14:00, during which the proposed changes by Stefanos Kasselakis to the party’s Statute and name were expected to be discussed, something that ultimately did not happen.
It is noted that, in any case, this discussion seemed unlikely to proceed, as in yesterday’s lengthy meeting of the Statute Committee, the participants only managed to reach the 10th of the 50 articles of the new statute, suggesting that it might not be discussed today.
