Although Kasselakis was removed, it is difficult to foresee a revival of SYRIZA in the near future. The crisis will deepen, and we will see many more episodes. There might be agreements on positions, political alliances, organizational structures, priorities, and programs. However, there is no strong personality to successfully undertake the reorganization of the official opposition and provide it with a governmental perspective.

The individuals who are currently seen as possible successors to Kasselakis – Polakis, Famellos, Gerovasili, Papas, Farantouris, Gletsos, and even Dourou has been mentioned – do not project the attractive image and, above all, the leadership solidity needed to challenge Mitsotakis. This is what SYRIZA needs: to find the gem that will lead them to government.

From left to right: Elena Akrita, Katerina Notopoulou, Olga Gerovasili, and Christos Spirtzis at the dramatic congress last February. We are now facing a new split.

Kasselakis proved tragically inadequate. During his one year at the helm of Kallithea, he resembled more of a televangelist than a politician. Instead of uniting SYRIZA, he divided it. Instead of increasing the party’s ratings, he reduced them. Instead of overthrowing Mitsotakis, as he claimed, he strengthened him and made him dominant. That’s why the motion of no confidence against him gathered a comfortable majority in the Central Committee.

Kasselakis is finished. Even if he runs again, he is unlikely to win. His potential re-election would further plunge Kallithea into disrepute, whining, factionalism, and divisions. Once he lost the power of leadership, his supporters began to wane. The allies who brought him to leadership turned their backs. Polakis “stabbed” him, and Papas is likely to wave goodbye as well. Even the Kasselistas, especially those MPs with a strong survival instinct, will turn their backs on him.

Stefanos has been weighed and found wanting as an opponent to Mitsotakis. Someone might suggest he could start his own party. Yes, he could. But now it’s too late. Now he is not president. Now he has been removed. It will be difficult to find 10 MPs to form a parliamentary group. If he had chosen to renew his mandate from the base, while simultaneously expelling dissenters, he would only need five MPs to have a parliamentary group.

There is also another very important point. Now that he has been removed, he cannot claim to start his own party and recruit MPs. In such a case, he would be accused of turning PASOK into the official opposition and would be labeled a “seat thief.” The things he has said until now (about the New Left or discrediting dissenters) would turn against him. Where he spat, he would now lick.

Of course, transformations are, as has been repeatedly proven, a trait of the man. Today he might say A, tomorrow B, and the day after something else. So he might start a party, hoping that with his media flair he will overcome the negatives of the venture, presenting himself as the victim of dark party mechanisms and the bureaucrats of the “Tsipras regime.” After all, in his year of presence, he has gained a fan club. SYRIZA has become a political caricature, but Stefanos has become a TV and internet personality.

There is also a third option: to return to Miami. This cannot be ruled out. Some say he might choose this option, since when the “assets declarations” of politicians are made public, he might not have the status of party leader or the warm support of SYRIZA under new leadership.

The Political Secretariat

Otherwise, tomorrow the Political Secretariat will decide the next steps, starting with the Central Committee meeting next Sunday to determine the time and content of the congress. The statutory congress scheduled for October 6 is, in practice, canceled. The question is whether it will be replaced by an extraordinary or a regular congress. Opinions are divided. Some argue that the mistake of last year’s congress, where a leader was elected without discussing the program and political positions, should not be repeated.

In any case, new delegates should be elected so that the new leader is not chosen by the delegates who (re)elected Alexis Tsipras with a Stalinist percentage (99.12%) in 2022 and preferred Kasselakis over Effie Achtsioglou for leader in 2023. If they choose to hold a programmatic congress first and then elect a leader, we will know the new leadership of SYRIZA in December, possibly right before or even after the budget debate in Parliament, in the New Year.

In the magical world of SYRIZA, anything can happen; nothing is excluded. In the meantime, the new leadership of PASOK will have been elected. This is something many in SYRIZA and PASOK want, especially those who prioritize the electoral alignment of the pluralistic center-left to defeat Mitsotakis and change the government shift.

Polakis wants to exploit the momentum gained from his candidacy due to the conflict with Kasselakis, and therefore proposes that the congress on October 6 proceed as planned and elect a president instead of making statutory changes. The “87” should first agree on the candidate, who may not end up being Famellos but someone who will agree to “sacrifice” themselves for a more prominent and widely accepted figure if the unity of the center-left proceeds.

Alexis Tsipras

And since many wonder if Alexis Tsipras is or will soon be in the frame of the developments, the answer from his associates and long-time interlocutors is monotonously the same: Those who involve Alexis in scenarios of returning to SYRIZA are mistaken, and reality will continue to disprove them. He will make no statements, give no interviews, and will not get involved in directing the election of new leadership in SYRIZA. He is definitely interested, but he did not leave his position as SYRIZA leader to become a team leader. Neither the “87” nor anyone else can appear as a member of some supposed guard of his. He is not a religious leader to have followers. Simply and clearly. Look for Kasselakis’s successor far from Tsipras.

However, the lucky one in this case is Nikos Papas. He took Famellos’s place in the leadership of the parliamentary group and now, in Kasselakis’s absence, will speak as the acting head of SYRIZA at the Thessaloniki International Fair (DETH), and will also face Kyriakos Mitsotakis in the first debate, at the level of leaders, to be held in Parliament. Not bad for a politician whom many of his comrades, after his conviction by the Special Court and the meager 8.7% he received as a candidate for SYRIZA’s leadership last September, considered finished.

Kasselakis’s Mistake

It should be noted that when Papas said that “Kasselakis will speak at DETH if he has not fallen,” he most likely knew about Kasselakis’s impending defeat. After all, some of his own influential staff had moved to the “87.” Polakis and the “87” had known since Friday about the existence of a majority in favor of the motion and were waiting for Kasselakis’s mistake to put it to a vote. Kasselakis refused to appeal to the base alone. And that was his first mistake.

The second and fatal mistake was when he agreed to let 74 members of the Central Committee vote by phone. The first vote on Saturday, among those present, was 122–90. The dissenters had the majority, but not the 50+1 of the members of the Central Committee (148 out of 295) needed to remove Kasselakis. If the 74 had not voted by phone, the 50+1 majority could not have been achieved. The clever bird was caught by the beak. Stefanos thought that with Papas’s staff he controlled the Central Committee.

It was also proven that Sfiggos, Dourou, Rigas, Skorinis, Voulgarakis, and others who told him “the motion will not pass” were not good at arithmetic. And now he is running and barely catching up. He may even reach complete humiliation if he runs and loses in the second round to Polakis. This is not unlikely, as delegates may prefer the fiery Polakis over the panelist Kasselakis as the lesser evil, regardless of what happens next in Kallithea.

In any case, the… circus in SYRIZA continues. After Polakis’s fury, Linou’s tearful outbursts, Tsipras’s “doesn’t answer my calls,” the wedding festivities in Chania, Spirtzis in the Disciplinary Committee, the dismissal of Famellos, the pool-swamp in Spetses, and the name change from SYRIZA to SYSA, we have reached the “masked” members of the Central Committee and the “murder” of the young Stefanos. And we haven’t seen it all yet. It goes without saying that the “absurdities” happening in SYRIZA under Kasselakis are a boon for the government, opposition parties, and especially PASOK.

And in any case, the relationship of the official opposition with social demands and the concerns of households and businesses is as distant as the relationship between a phantom and turpentine. That’s why not only citizens but also SYRIZA voters are increasingly telling the protagonists of this farce: “You have tired us out.” And this is the truth. SYRIZA is now tiring. And fatigue in politics is worse than laughter…