Hellenic parliament: Election of new SYRIZA president in in September

Procedures are “running” in SYRIZA, after the sudden resignation of Alexis Tsipras. The Political Secretariat at its yesterday’s meeting concluded, despite the difference of opinion, in the road map of the “reconstruction” of the official opposition party, while Sokratis Famellos was appointed as “acting” president of the Parliamentary Group, with Dionysis Kalamatianos as secretary.

The recommendation of the Secretariat to the Central Committee will be to hold a permanent conference at the end of August and to hold the election of a new president from the grassroots in the first ten days of September (in one or two weekends depending on the number of candidates). In addition, to hold an extraordinary conference in November. The Central Committee of SYRIZA will meet on July 15 and 16, the nominations for the position of President will be submitted.

On Wednesday, July 5, the Political Secretariat will meet again.

The battle in parliament

Today, the SYRIZA Parliamentary Group will meet, which is expected to ratify the decision of the General Assembly to appoint Sokratis Famellos as its interim head. Olga Gerovasili will be nominated for the position of the vice-president of the Parliament. Secretary will be Dionysis Kalamatianos.

Nikos Pappas, Theodora Tzakri and Nasos Iliopoulos will be the new parliamentary representatives of the party, as decided in the Political Secretariat.

The specific group will undertake to organize the line of confrontation, with the government and Kyriakos Mitsotakis, in view of the debate on the programmatic statements of the government, which starts on Thursday in the Parliament.

The party “battle” for the conference

Among the topics that occupied yesterday’s SYRIZA Political Bureau meeting, was the time of the conference. Umbrella and its allies finally wanted a conference quickly and finally settled with the majority’s proposal for a permanent conference (thus with the same composition of the last one) for the first ten days of September and election of a new President then.

Dionysis Temponera’s proposal for an organized process after the self-governing elections was voted down. Dionysis Temponeras, proposed that “the conference should be organized after the self-governing elections, in an open, painstaking and persistent process, without hasty choices”, as “only in this way will the new emerge”. He said that “a new representative congress must emerge, which will elect new bodies, new central committee, new parliamentary group and of course a new president, after complete ideological and political platforms have been submitted, with the contribution of members and society’s bodies…”. He added that “until the election of the bodies, all the bodies must be transitional or ex officio. Parliamentary roles, due to their weight and visibility, must be cyclical and renewable, in short terms”. Finally, Mr. Temponeras said: “I declare my presence in advance in all processes only if they contribute to the creation of a new political subject, which will go along with the positions and principles I mentioned to you.”

As concerns the time of the conference there was the differentiation of Christos Spirtzis as well as for the election of the new President. He suggested that new bodies be elected immediately. He also proposed a transitional representation of the party, with four deputies of the outgoing president. Mr. Spirtzis reportedly proposed Euclid Tsakalotos, Alexis Haritsis, Efi Ahtsioglou and Nikos Pappa for the transitional leadership of SYRIZA. After the meeting of the Political Bureau, he announced that he would resign, while speaking to public broadcaster ERT, he said that there should be a resignation of the members of the Political Secretariat and the two secretaries and that the Central Committee should elect new persons. Spirtzis proposal was upvoted by only 4 members of the Political Bureau including himself, Pavlos Polakis, Katerina Notopoulou and Zoe Karkoulia.

Alexis Tsipras did not participate in the meeting, as expected.

However, the absence of Dimitris Tzanakopoulos caused an impression, in the aftermath of the incident he had in the previous days with Panagiotis Rigas which ended in fisticuffs.