What makes pasokos return to the figure of Fofi Gennimata so intensely, three years after her death?
The irony of her death, the shock of losing a young woman is one sided. For those within PASOK who are usually said to have “stayed in the thick of things”, however, Gennimata is something more: in this year’s PASOK fiftieth anniversary novel, she is the person who believed in the rebirth of the Democrats. Party, when for others it was a finished deal. When the 20% estimate that PASOK received in the Metron Analysis poll was not even visible with binoculars.
Because of Gennimata’s untimely death, due to a disease that more and more women are fighting every day, even those who have never turned on the sound of the television to hear her speak. On a human level, her courage and bravery, the way she handled her illness, the way she stood her ground to the end, shows a woman who was committed to life and to those she loves, fully aware on what is to come, yet ready to rule her. his destiny. She chose not to be a victim, but an active subject, choosing when and how to end her own story.
On a political level, this thirst is a deep conviction that the faction he led and identified with his personal and family history is not yet dead. In 2015, when he took the reins of PASOK, he was essentially undertaking a suicide mission: a party wounded in the consciousness of its social base, a recent split (with the son of the founder on the other bank), a poll on the verge of entering the. Parliament. She did not have half an army in her quiver: the once powerful Post-Revolutionary party was treated as a complement, contributing (not as the first violin) to the “rational front” against the SYRIZA government and what was developing in the summer that, or take the ANEL position with Alexis Tsipras next September.
The period of crisis
At that crucial point, Gennimata continued the line of responsibility, with which PASOK managed the whole period of the crisis – with the difficult decision to take a stand against a large part of the PASOK 2009 audience, which was completely on the side of “No. “. PASOK, however, did not intend to act as an additional force of the ND. It began, slowly but surely, a painful process of decolonization, political demarcation and independence of the parties – with one foot in power, which was still is part of the old coin that did not get “the opportunity” to change parties in the old age and with the other person in the future: the fresh faces that she brought to the front today are at the forefront of PASOK, whether they gave later support for the current leadership or not.
They accused Gennimata of PASOK’s betrayal of the Movement for Change, when she (although she didn’t have to) went through the electoral process from the ground up in something completely new, in a big brand that would keep the brand alive without polluting it more – by opening at the same time, the game in the forces of increase, from right and left and unite as many pieces of PASOK as possible. The experiment was not a complete success, because the nostalgia and the difficulty of composition with the responsibility of everyone, including those who came to KINAL, won the battle. The main parts of PASOK, however, sooner or later came together – in the framework she first laid and their coexistence continues to this day.
PASOK’s protective cocoon, however, did not do its job directly at the level of financial settlement, which enabled the party to continue moving despite the hardship, but gave time to heal the wounds left by the passing of the memorandum on to heal the green sun: even if he didn’t like it, “PASOK, nice years” and the pop dimension he took from the generations caught up in the government slowly calmed the anger for a whole decade. And the figure of Gennimata herself, the way she moved in the crisis, the empathy for the small things of daily life before they became political communication, gave PASOK a special character, which became even more significant when she died. Gennimata’s management gave PASOK a second life and a completely different attitude to her successor than the one she received.
The prevailing feeling is that Gennimata “put her house in order” – it is very easy to say that a woman also functioned politically as a housewife. But this was not the main aspect of her presence in the PASOK leadership: Gennimata was politically bold not to shout it, she was open to discussion until she made her decision (and then, right or wrong, no one moved her half a millimeter ), protected his faction (extending that safety net, in ways that are not necessarily known, to the internal competitors of the parties), giving opportunities when she considered them necessary and taking them back when she considered she thought it was necessary—without a second thought.
She was the right person for PASOK, at the right time – she lifted the weight on her shoulders, so that there would be another chance. They remember her, therefore, because they owe the future they have today to her.