A majority of Greece’s main opposition party SYRIZA Central Committee members voted on Sunday in favor of a censure motion against party leader Stefanos Kasselakis.
Ιn favor of the censure motion voted 163 members of the Central Committee and 120 against. The CC has a total of 295, SYRIZa-affiliated newspaper
avgi.gr reported on its online edition early afternoon Sunday. @ votes were “blank” and one “invalid.”
The motion was out forward by the “Group of 87” faction, known as supporters of former prime minister and ex party leader Alexis Tsipras.
The motion was submitted on Saturday with the backing of one-third of the central committee members.
In the censure motion, a total of 286 members voted in secret ballot. The majority of them with physical presence, while 21 per telephone.
Following the results, an extraordinary party congress will be convened with delegates to determine the process for electing a new leader.
Offended Kasselakis
“I am relieved because all the citizens saw the war I have been facing since the first day I was elected president” Stefanos Kasselakis said speaking to the Central Committee after the vote.
“My decisions will be announced where I am accountable to, to the people of SYRIZA” he added.
“It is unprecedented that the party bureaucracy does not accept the vote of the party members. That’s how I spent a whole year” he noted. He also denounced the voting process that was done with a secret ballot box and not openly and by name as he wanted. He went so far to speak of voters “wearing hoods”, an expression with a very negative pejorative meaning in Greece, normally used for “traitors.”
It is not clear yet, whether Kasselakis will again candidate as leader, however, he stood out in the weekend Central Committee meeting with arrogance and authoritarian features, insulting several times his “comrades,” high ranking party officials with longer past in the Greek Left than Kasselakis who discovered it last year.
“I won’t allow that they take away the Left from me,” he shouted among others.
One year of SYRIZA circus
One year after his election as leader of SYRIZA, Kasselakis did nothing else other than trying to divide and weaken the party that claimed the power in Greece with 32% in 2019 but fell to 15% in the European elections in 2024 and keeps falling in recent
public opinion polls.
He turned the party into a circus, deprived it of its left-identity, crashed its traditions and polylectic structures and tried to turn it into a one-man “American Evangelist” lifestyle show.
While the Greek society is heavily troubled with ongoing social problems such as high prices, collapse of the health care, housing crisis and energy – just to mention a few –
Stefanos Kasselakis caused the biggest crisis ever in a Greek political party.
Now SYRIZA is divided into three: the Kasselistas, the Tsipristas and the Polakistas (named after ex health minister Pavlos Polakis who turned from Stefanos’ supporter to his main challenger.)
Voters who have been deeply disappointed from the developments of the last year and turned their back to the party, estimate that SYRIZA will not be able to recover and estimated that the party will return to its previous 3% to 5% maximum.
Some party members see themselves confirmed in their original suspicion that Kasselakis was “implanted” to destroy the left-wing main opposition party in Greece.
RIP SYRIZA
