After a long period of infighting, the Syriza party in Greece has elected a new leader.
Sokratis Famellos won 49.41 per cent of the members’ vote, a little under the “half plus one” threshold to avoid a run-off. Despite that, his main opponent, Pavlos Polakis, conceded defeat after obtaining 43.51 per cent of the votes.
That eliminated the need for a second round of voting.
Famellos served as chairman of the Syriza parliamentary group after Alexis Tsipras resigned as party chairman in the summer of 2023.
Between 2015 and 2019, Syriza was the main party in Greece, leading the government. But since then, it has been on a downward spiral.
Famellos will have to work on getting his hard-left party back on track after Stefanos Kasselakis, the flamboyant outsider, turned things upside down.
Kasselakis was able to take power in September 2023 after Syriza suffered major defeats against the centre-right New Democracy (ND) Party. That led to long-term party leader and former prime minister Alexis Tsipras stepping down, providing an opening for Kasselakis.
His background as a former Goldman Sachs employee, shipowner and one-time registered Republican in the US, raised eyebrows among traditional Socialist supporters.
Policy proposals, particularly advocating employee stock options and lower taxes, sparked controversy within the ranks. Some long-standing party members viewed these positions as a departure from their core ideological principles and accused Kasselakis of courting populism.
It led to an exodus of members and a left-wing faction of the party splitting off. That group claimed the Syriza leader engaged in “Trumpian practices”, “Bonapartism”, “undemocratic behaviour”, “authoritarianism” and “right-leaning populism”.
Syriza, Greece’s main opposition party, is splintering as its left-wing faction turns its back on the party. https://t.co/0BoZ46dThs
— Brussels Signal (@brusselssignal) November 13, 2023
Kasselakis was ousted by the party and on November 23, he announced the launch of his own group, Movement for Democracy.
All this saw Syriza tumble in the polls and a return of the traditional Socialist Party, PASOK.
In the European Parliament elections of June, Syriza received only 14 per cent of the vote and polls show their popularity slipping even further.
On November 19, two MPs of Syriza left the party, leaving it with 29 deputies in the Greek Parliament, fewer than PASOK, which became the main opposition party.
One of the deputies, Theodora Tzakri, said her departure from Syriza was ” an act of self-respect and self-worth”.
“The actions and tactics of those who have proclaimed themselves the current owners and guardians of Syriza have already stripped the party of its role as the main opposition,” she said.
Turnout in the internal elections was relatively low, with 70,000 members voting, significantly fewer than in last year’s internal party elections.
