His Political Secretariat is holding an extraordinary meeting this morning SYRIZA-PS. According to information, the meeting will be held at the party offices in Koumoundourou at 12:00, with the possibility of a video conference.
The extraordinary convocation of the General Assembly was requested earlier by 17 of its 24 members on the occasion of the online questionnaire of Stefanou Kasselakis for identity, political features and even the name and logo of the party.
Specifically, the request was signed by: Panagiota Beloni Arapi, Olga Gerovasilis, Costas Zachariadis, Thanasis Theocharopoulos, Zoe Karkoulia, Maria Kouveli, Katerina Notopoulou, Marilisa Xenogiannakopoulou, Nikos Pappas, Pavlos Polakis, Yannis Ragousis, Panos Rigas, Nikos Skorinis, Eleni Symeonidou , Olympia Teligioridou, Dionysis Teboneras and Alekos Flambouraris.
In the meantime, Stefanos Kasselakis from London, where he is, spoke at an event for SYRIZA United Kingdom executives.
The timeline of reactions
The extraordinary convocation of the Political Secretariat and the Central Committee, before the start of the 4th Congress of the party on February 22, was requested in the morning by the MP and 4th vice-president of the Parliament Olga Gerovasiliafter the initiative of Stefanos Kasselakis to ask the opinion of the members of the party “on issues concerning the structure, the name, the logo, as well as its political identity”, as she mentioned.
“Key, critical and important issues are not raised in the public sphere since they have not been raised neither in the positions, nor in the public, nor in the internal party dialogue of the party members” write down.
The political surprise Kasselakis, however, did not only disturb Olga Gerovasilis, but also Christos Spirtzis, who, speaking on Sunday morning on ERT, called on Stefanos Kasselakis to “land on reality”, characterizing “unacceptable that the president has not submitted his positions on these issues.” The former minister, in turn, called on Stefanos Kasselakis to convene the SYRIZA bodies, clarifying that he himself has not completed the disputed questionnaire and is not going to.
The reaction of Panos Rigos, a member of the P.G. who is considered to belong to the core of the current president’s supporters. Mr. Rigas, in his post, emphasized that “the appearance of a questionnaire on identity issues that are conference topics without me knowing as a member of the PG the need and expediency, voluntarily by the president, it does not contribute to the collective battle we have to fight.” He noted that the president of the party must immediately take the initiative for consultation and pointing out that he will continue to support the party “away from personal strategies”.
His statement is on the same wavelength Nikos Pappa in “Ef.Syn.” As he said, “the changes to the statutes at the conference in 2022 allow and submit members’ participation in decision-making. This is why our leadership and the central committee have been elected from the grassroots. This is provided for in the statute, which binds us all, from the first to the last.”
The “answer” Kasselakis
A few hours later, with his post on X, the president of SYRIZA, Stefanos Kasselakis, showed that he is sticking to his decision to share a questionnaire on the iSYRIZA platform to party members ahead of the Congress. He even mentioned that in the envisioned party “the organs first listen to the base and then decide, taking it into account”.
“I know it’s something unusual for the political scene in our country, but in order to speak to society again we have to go beyond ourselves and listen to society,” added the president of SYRIZA, who clarified that “we are not talking here about polls in news reports but about a process of internal party democracy”.
In fact, he hastened to mention that the progressive world has been shouting at us since 2019 to “change everything”. The choice to refer to the year of the electoral defeat of SYRIZA which led Alexis Tsipras to the procedures of the so-called “enlargement” of the party is not only by chance, since in this way Stefanos Kasselakis is essentially addressing the “pro-Tsipras” audience, thus answering at the peak of Olga Gerovasilis about the possible dissolution of “the party that Alexis Tsipras led to government”.
In the SYRIZA I envision, the President and the Institutions first listen to the base and then decide, taking it into account.
I know it’s unusual for the political scene in our country, but to speak to society again we have to get over ourselves and…
— Stefanos Kasselakis (@skasselakis) February 18, 2024
Sharper was her answer Theodoras Tzakri, which also belongs to the neo-presidential guard. The SYRIZA member of parliament, in her statement to Avgi, argued that “there are no blasphemous questions that are excluded”, while she sent a clear message to the “dissenters” that “there is no more room left for procedural objections, nor can there be room for the ambitions of leaders at a critical moment”. The party’s deputy was placed on top of the questionnaire Nina Kasimatiwhich, in fact, spoke of the need to re-establish the party.
Embarrassment and other “tribes” of SYRIZA
As “K” is able to know, however, in addition to the already manifested reactions, numbness and embarrassment also prevails in other “tribes” of SYRIZA after the questionnaire. The common component of the problem concerns the fact that while the party is being led to a non-statutory conference, the questions asked in the questionnaire are profoundly statutory, as they concern the party’s ideological identity, name and logo. In fact, SYRIZA executives make it clear that the content of the texts to be discussed at the conference cannot be changed despite the content of the questionnaire.
2024-02-18 22:08:34