SYRIZA seeks reset, but can find no allies

The once-governing leftist SYRIZA party is looking forward to its June congress as a chance for a reset, after the constant turmoil that followed the disastrous results in the last national elections, in May and June 2023.

The once-dominant party that had won over 35% in two successive elections in 2015 and had topped 30% even when it had lost power, in 2019, is now into mid-single digits in the latest opinion polls.

With little hope of returning to its glory days, the party is looking for alliances on the center-left and the left, hoping for a progressive front like the one achieved in France. The vision makes sense, given that the opposition to the ruling conservatives is fractured. The trouble is no one wants to join.

Socialist PASOK had already made that clear. New Left, a party that split from SYRIZA in late 2023, has followed suit, although, true to the troubles that plague small parties on the left, it is split almost down the middle on the issue.

SYRIZA is the only Greek political party in the past 50 years, and maybe ever, that has suffered six splits. Splinter parties out of New Democracy and PASOK, who dominated politics until 2012, were all short-lived and they did not much affect the two motherships’ strength. In this parliament, SYRIZA has four splinter parties sharing the opposition banks: New Left, ex-leader Stefanos Kasselakis’ Movement for Democracy, former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis’ MeRA 25, and former parliament speaker Zoe Konstantopoulou’s Course for Freedom. The latter has soared in the polls, displacing PASOK as the second most popular party.

Poll analyses show that “Course of Freedom” has poached most of its new supporters from SYRIZA and that, moreover, it will be very difficult for SYRIZA to reclaim them, as they seem to prefer, by far, the fiery Konstantopoulou’s populist approach to the more measured tones of SYRIZA leader Sokratis Famellos.

Kathimerini