Many messages — and not obvious ones — were hidden in yesterday’s premiere of the Hellenic Left Alliance (ELAS), the new party of Alexis Tsipras. The former prime minister, together with his very close team, curated an event that was widely acknowledged for its rich spectacle and professionalism, as his real intentions appear to run deeper.

The venue at Jacqueline de Romilly Square in Thissio had been divided into zones, the circular stage extended “into” the crowd, and visuals from the event along with photographs of Alexis Tsipras rotated across the screens.

The musical direction bore the signature of Stamatis Kraounakis, while a theatrical touch revealed the name of the new party through an envelope carried onto the stage by Ira, a young girl from the former prime minister’s broader social circle, dressed in white.

The human geography

As for the name itself, it was Tsipras’s personal choice, and he unexpectedly announced it one morning to his associates at the beginning of spring, having already carefully gauged potential reactions and various associations.

The wave of reactions to the new party’s name — which referred either to the Greek Police or to the Greek People’s Liberation Army — was, however, precisely the former prime minister’s main objective: to shock and activate reflexes in a broader audience than that of the old and once-dominant SYRIZA or its many fragments.

Already, the makeup of yesterday’s gathering and the mobilization of Tsipras’s staff in recent days were revealing: independent MPs (Athina Linou, Giannis Sarakiotis, Ferhat Ozgkiour), former MPs (Dimitris Gakis, Menelaos Maltezos, Giannis Simorelis, Marios Katsis, Fotini Bakadima, Giannis Stefos, Eleni Avlonitou, among others), historic party figures and former ministers from the 2015 government (Kostas Gavroglou, Giannis Balafas, Panagiotis Kouroumplis), local government figures linked to Koumoundourou such as Nikos Belavilas, officials from the SYRIZA-PS government like Andreas Nefeloudis, and dozens of party cadres from Koumoundourou’s “golden era” were all present in Thissio.

In other words, many of the successive splinters of the once “unified SYRIZA,” which in the 2023 national elections fell to a historic low of 17.84% under Tsipras’s leadership.

The 2019 alignment

Both the new party’s name and the color palette of its logo turn the clock back even further, to 2019. The blue color and the word “Hellenic” in the official title coexist with the red color and the adjective “Left” in a pluralistic version of Alexis Tsipras.

This version culminates in the word “alliance,” a “front-like concept referring to rallying forces, as opposed to the opportunistic character of alliances,” according to well-informed sources, and in any case not to an alliance of movements or existing parties. This blend found unified expression in the name “ELAS,” also incorporating the term “patriotism,” which repeatedly resurfaced in Tsipras’s speech yesterday, alongside his political point of origin: the Left.

This broad perspective of Tsipras’s new party became even more evident in the lines of ELAS’s Founding Declaration, with the former prime minister characteristically stating: “We are something more than a party. We express a great political alignment,” seeking to capture what he himself had described once before in the past.

Specifically, the last time he referred to the “great progressive democratic alignment” was on the night of the 2019 national elections, when, after receiving 32% of the vote, he declared he had received a “mandate for the transformation” of SYRIZA.

Clear roots

Using exactly the same words and invoking the 32% result, the former prime minister sought once again last night in Thissio to reconnect with that audience, although his staff has not yet publicly defined the potential limits of his “broad outreach,” waiting for the first polls before fully unveiling the strategy.

According to reliable information, both the reference in Chalandri to the “governing Left of the new era” and the choice of the word “Left” in the new party’s name constitute a conscious decision to define precisely his political starting point as the launchpad for a “storming of the heavens,” not only so that the progressive audience can easily identify the dominant force in the space, but mainly to sharply distinguish it from horizontal political approaches, such as those some perceive in the Karystianou party.

Moreover, with a small but politically clear and ideologically defined starting point, the goal of repeating the 2023 national election percentage could appear much more realistic for the former prime minister, along with flirting with second place in the polls.

However, the fact that in yesterday’s speech he attempted to blend a more centrist perspective in shades of blue with a political identification of New Democracy and PASOK strengthens scenarios suggesting that Alexis Tsipras is returning dynamically, setting the bar quite high.

By identifying New Democracy and PASOK with the forces responsible for the bankruptcy era, SYRIZA had once ridden the wave of 2015, and Tsipras yesterday sharply criticized both parties, stating that “sixteen years after the bankruptcy, we are once again ruled by those who sank us,” adding further that “the two old parties of the Metapolitefsi, New Democracy and PASOK, which often feature the same people in ministerial offices — one time under one color, another time under another — no longer offer anything new.”

In such a perspective, even the name “ELAS” could evoke memories among parts of the KKE audience, much as happened during the rise toward “the first time Left,” when Alexis Tsipras for a long period repeatedly extended a hand of friendship toward Perissos.

Common roots

Even though SYRIZA-PS MPs collectively observed the unofficial “embargo” and stayed away from Thissio for reasons of political civility — as it was decided not to push relations between the new party and Koumoundourou to extremes from the very first event — Tsipras’s former party nevertheless reportedly assessed ELAS’s premiere positively.

Many focused on the word “alliance,” estimating that it could evolve into an “organized cooperation” between parties despite claims to the contrary from Tsipras’s camp, as well as on the shared ideological references.

“Alexis Tsipras set the Left as the foundation, because he could neither renounce the history of SYRIZA nor himself,” a senior party figure commented to protothema.gr after the event, while several SYRIZA-PS officials also reportedly reacted positively to both the tone and the aesthetics of the event.

New Left convenes

Meanwhile, in the aftermath of ELAS, MPs and party officials from New Left who are said to be close to declaring independence are meeting today, centered around the “Charitsis group” (Alexis Charitsis, Nasos Iliopoulos, Dimitris Tzanakopoulos, Efi Achtsioglou, etc.), in order to position themselves regarding the new developments.

Beyond the prospect of becoming independent, the New Left MPs who stand on the threshold of departure from the party are expected to release a joint statement reflecting their political concern over the condition of the broader political space, having long rejected fragmentation.