I’ve got to convey to my compatriots in Cyprus that we’re experiencing moments of infinite absurdity here in Athens, thanks to the SYRIZA Congress, which, since the notorious intervention of the populist Tsipras, who led the party to 17%, feels like watching a never-ending live broadcast of a Monty Python marathon.
This fantastic comedy troupe of great actors had the talent to ridicule everything, but in an intelligent way.
Stefanos Kasselakis, an invention of Tsipras, who until now was sailing on seas of endless happiness (mainly because he won control of the old guard in the open elections for party leadership – in other words, he took them to the cleaners, as we crudely put it), matured abruptly and transformed into a political beast within a few days.
While Tsipras, with a simple stitch (and not personally), decided that the party needed to elect a new leader, and the old guard decided in a blink to abandon his rival, Olga Gerovasili, Kasselakis withdrew yesterday the “find me an opponent and let’s go…” statement he made the day before yesterday, and put things in their place.
With astonishing ease on stage, he gathered all the old generations, those who, along with Tsipras, diminished the party, and told them the obvious: I won by a landslide in the elections held a few months ago, so it’s hubris for you to want to overthrow me now…
Something that my colleague at Protagon, Kostas Giannakidis, rendered much better than I can now, in just one paragraph:
“And in the end, the triumph of the conference. Stefanos Kasselakis. Who introduced the concept of emotional populism with broken hearts and open arms to the world. Now he can do whatever he wants or, anyway, he has an open road, but mainly the legitimization to proceed with purges. At the conference, he put the party in his pocket and showed that his eye sparkles. Yes, after the European elections, the grumbling will start again. But until then, he may have silenced them. Many may laugh at the situation, but I’m no longer sure the guy is a laughing matter.”
At this Congress, the old minds that know perfectly well how to shuffle the deck and mark the cards emerged again.
Characteristic cases are the notorious Pollakis, who was with Stefanos in the beginning (because that’s what Tsipras indicated), but was thrown away like a squeezed lemon when Kasselakis asked for party discipline for the overwhelming approval of the bill for same-sex couples, and Pollakis disagreed – because, as we know, the Cretan is a man! And Nikos Pappas, who is less… blunt, hence more dangerous, as he knows perfectly well how to create and maintain balances.
Kasselakis entered the Congress with momentum, ignorance of danger, and limited political weight.
A characteristic case: on the first day, he took the stage, took the floor, and said: “I now demand an immediate ceasefire in Gaza” and was applauded. Of course. Reports from the column state that Netanyahu was so shaken by the statement of the President of SYRIZA that he immediately convened his war council to consider the request…
