2023-09-17 06:57:41
SYRIZA is in a transition crisis. The defeat in the recent elections and the departure of Alexis Tsipras caused processes and gave rise to deep uncertainty within it.
The cadre, members and electoral base of the party are in a state of psychological shock. They experience a lingering feeling of mourning, which they have to overcome. A party that lived for a long time under the leadership of a charismatic leader is today electing a new leadership, which is expected to contribute to the party’s poll recovery. Tough bet!
Today’s elections are undoubtedly a crucial stage. Will these be the starting point of a new beginning or will they push SYRIZA into an endless vortex? The question remains unanswered for now.
Every major party is also judged by its ability to overcome defeats and realistically understand reality, so that it can recover electorally. In the same way, the voters of SYRIZA must prove that they have a strong survival instinct and a sense of collective perspective. And this primarily starts with the very participation of the members in the process. The size of the participation, however, is not the only criterion that guarantees the success of the project. New leadership is critical.
The new president must meet four conditions:
1. Proven political experience and institutional role to directly lead the party inside and outside Parliament. Anyone who thinks that institutions are a detail in politics is simply irrelevant.
2. Sufficient party experience and acceptance by the majority of the party’s executive potential so that it can accompany the first, difficult phase of the transition. In the big parties there is no room for apprentice messiahs, the structures and executives play a crucial role.
3. Coherent political platform, whose appeal will not be ideologically limited but neither will it constitute a nebula of incoherent proposals.
A Left that neglects to talk about poverty, exploitation, class barriers in health, education, work and housing is not a Left. And then it is the Right that fills the gap.
4. Time-based, and not momentary and shallow, popularity that allows to cultivate reasonable expectations for the electoral recovery of the party.
So the issue does not stop at the face. The political identity and style that SYRIZA will broadcast – P.S. is a critical issue. SYRIZA – P.S. it is a governing Left and not a small protest party or a one-issue party. It cannot appeal to a narrow range of views and ideas, but on the other hand it cannot be a “party of phases”, to use a slang expression, that is, a party of people who will not be concerned with the content of politics but will care about the basics for “phase”, communication and polling in this case.
The truth is that in recent years the Left in the West has been falling towards the “phase”. And this is not unrelated to its gradual mutation towards what has been called the “Caviar Left” or the “Brahminical Left” as the French economist Thomas Piketty calls it. This is a Left that basically represents educated middle classes whose income is slightly below or even above the average national income.
This Left has shaped its identity from new issues and new ways of life and production. Not bad in itself, quite the opposite. The Left must express the multiplicity of new sensibilities and emancipation in all its forms.
However, the Left that neglects to talk about poverty, exploitation, class barriers in health, education, work and housing is not the Left. And then it is the Right that fills the gap, a certain Right, often a very black Right.
The heart of the Left must continue to beat where exploitation and inequality continue to exist. And the mind of the Left must continue to think primarily in terms of redistribution, not afraid to talk about taxing the rich. But that’s another discussion.
Mr. Nikos Marantzidis is a professor of Political Science at the University of Macedonia.
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