It was inevitable that what was happening at SYRIZA would happen, MRB managing director Dimitris Mavros commented on developments within the party ahead of the election of a new president.

Speaking on Monday on the Proto Program, on Thanos Siafakas’ show, Mr. Mavros pointed out, among other things, that “Syriza once took PASOK voters, because – despite all the lies – that’s what it’s all about.

“Syriza was always a party of 4%, maybe 5% then 3.5%, then in danger of going back to 5%, etc. Back then Greece – I’m talking about the memoranda – needed a tool to solve the problem, or if you like, to act as a morphine injection to make the memorandum go through more gently and not hurt so much. Which it did.

“But the logic which ultimately prevails in this area prevented SYRIZA from becoming PASOK. It could not become a truly institutional, systemic party of power.

“If you talk to the people inside SYRIZA, in whatever section they are in and in the New Left and those who seem to be staying in SYRIZA and those who are leaving SYRIZA, they are more interested in the procedural and the ritual and in being pure leftists than in governing.”

On the future of the party, and the party that Stefanos Kasselakis intends to found, Mavros said that SYRIZA “if things show that attitudes remain as they are, it has no future.”

He clarified that the party “has a small future of 3, 4, 5%. If Mr. Kasselakis, on the other hand, does not correct some things which he exaggerated at the beginning and I don’t want to elaborate further on this particular exaggeration, he will still not be able to go far. Because, Greek society is too conservative, and some of the positions that people take or even say in the polls are politically correct expressions so that I am not considered a bad guy.

“This kind of Left, well, my humble opinion is that it’s over, and right now everything is working for the karma of Mr. Androulakis, for the karma of Nikos Androulakis.”

On PASOK he said that “it’s not Mr. Androulakis anymore. It is also Mrs. Diamantopoulou, Mr. Geroulanos, and Mr. Dukas, even if they are external and peripheral. There is a cluster of political figures with leadership gifts, which gives a substantial expectation from PASOK. An expectation for a view of power, which PASOK can approach (…)“.

Finally, on whether PASOK anticipates that it will take the position of the opposition, Mavros noted that barring an unforeseen eventuality, “I have a feeling very soon we will see it there.”