Fmr PM Simitis puts paid to Greek center-left rapprochement

In less than 24 hours, the image of Nikos Androulakis and Stefanos Kasselakis sitting, smiling, next to each other and discussing the Tempi disaster and the wiretapping scandal, was lost in front of what separates the two parties.

The response of the president of SYRIZA to the empty chair with his name at the event for Kostas Simitis (“What do I have to do with all those who have wasted so many billions of euros of the Greek people? Do we forget the vested interests of these years? Wasn’t it just modernization. Let others take up the mantle of the country’s debt. SYRIZA certainly did not cause it”), resurfaced SYRIZA’s older narrative about the crisis – before it came to power and was called upon to vote and implement memoranda, when (center-left executives note) he put the burden of bankruptcy on the PASOK governments, leaving the period of Kostas Karamanlis, from 2004 to 2009, untouched.

“Mr. Kasselakis seems not only to have not settled down ideologically in his 24 years, but he also ignores the country’s recent history. The offer of the former prime minister and president of PASOK, Costas Simitis, is recognized, even by his sworn ideological opponents”, said the party’s press representative, Thanasis Glavinas, in his statement.

“By repeating the vulgar populism against PASOK, Mr. Kasselakis proves that Mr. Polakis is his mentor.” The invocation of the former deputy minister of health is not just a coincidence: Polakis was quick to congratulate the president of SYRIZA for the reaction, but also to throw intra-party barbs at those within the party who “caught fourth grade fever” when he referred to the former prime minister and former president of PASOK – with phrases about “black money” and “starter”, which he used even now.

Barbs within PASOK

Kasselakis’ reaction, of course, also created reactions within PASOK, with Odysseus Konstantinopoulos commenting in his post: “Twenty-four hours were needed to stop the PASOK-SYRIZA “romance”. Personally, I considered it to be expected and what was written only in their imagination existed! Even worse for those who believed it!!”.

The vice-president of the Parliament, also looking inside his party, spoke of “tactics that have an expiration date” and the political autonomy of PASOK “far from speculators and janissaries”.

The questions, however, are mainly addressed to the side of the SYRIZA leadership, which on the one hand seeks an institutional consensus and weighting of a common position on wiretapping and the Tempi with PASOK, and on the other hand reminds, with the president’s phraseology, of the Simitis, that the staff team around Kasselakis is a “red flag” for PASOK. Given the problems it has from the left and the internal party turmoil concerning its leftist tendency, can SYRIZA not somehow heal its relationship with the progressive Center?

In her own post, Anna Diamantopoulou, organizer of the event for Simitis (in which no SYRIZA official was present, even though it was open and without the need for an invitation), set the tone: “If Stefanos Kasselakis had come to the event for Costas Simitis, it would have been a cultural revolution. If he simply just didn’t come it was something to be expected. The fact that he did not come and vulgarly addressed the PASOK government under Simitis creates disgust in the people of the Center, since before he did the same to the people of the Left. Coming soon: END TITLES’.

Venizelos: Yes to collaborations, as long as…

In fact, the Simitis case brings to the surface the essence of the relationship between the two parties, regardless of the individual parliamentary agreement that will be judged on a case-by-case basis anyway: SYRIZA and PASOK in the coming European elections will battle it out for second place.

Until then, the doctrine of “your death, my life” works for both parties (even if they don’t admit it, pointing their arrows mainly at Mitsotakis). In the result, however, the continuation may be judged – yesterday’s position of Evangelos Venizelos in the “Circle of Ideas” had its own interest.

The former president of PASOK stated that it is difficult to create the counterweight of the opposition “with an independent political proposal” and, if such a thing does not exist, “cooperation must be sought within the constitutional framework”.

At this stage, however, Venizelos acknowledged that “we are at an intermediate phase until the European elections and the PASOK-SYRIZA competition for who will be the second party and, therefore, the essential opposition, is to be expected”, pointing out that PASOK “it has the right to claim to become a second party with what it says