Stefanos Tzoumakas submitted his candidacy for the presidency of the party during a meeting of the crucial Central Committee of the party, where the nominations for the leadership of the party will be submitted and the schedule and road map for the election of the leader will be decided.

It should be noted that Efi Ahtsioglou and Euclid Tsakalotos have already announced their candidacies, while Nikos Pappas is expected to submit his.

In detail, the nomination text of Stefanos Tzoumakas:

Stefanos Tzoumakas
Member of the Executive Committee of SYRIZA Progressive Alliance

Athens, July 15, 2023

To the Presidium of the Central Committee of SYRIZA Progressive Alliance

Comrades and comrades,

Based on the agenda and the prescribed procedures of the KE, I am informing you that I will be running for the position of President in the election process.

I can contribute with knowledge, experience and honesty to the change of course of SYRIZA PS for the formation of a Victory strategy in the next electoral contest and the reorganization of the progressive movement, with the aim of implementing our policy in favor of the country and the Greek people.

Developments for the election of leadership in the Party exert an influence on public life as a whole and to a certain extent activate the interest of citizens regardless of party affiliation.

Under the leadership of A. Tsipras, Syriza PS established itself in the consciousness of the citizens and became an agent of change, progress, an agent of defense of national and popular interests, an agent that determined decisions and developments in the country and in the EU, with historical visibility at the international level.

At the international level, the competition of interests between the superpowers of a new, second “cold war” is intensifying. The European Union and the USA do not have leadership for positive interventions, apart from the fact that they are going through economic hardship which, among other things, is expressed both by the living crisis of millions of citizens in the Western world and aggravated by the productive rise of the Developing Countries.

Our country is facing serious problems, an ongoing, lurking crisis in the economy, productive anemia, unfair taxation and distribution of the wealth produced, regardless of the management options put forward by the Government as supposed solutions.

In addition to this, in the absence of the Parliament, despite the Greek people’s adherence to the logic of compromises that characterizes the government’s plans in the Aegean and Cyprus, violating fixed national positions, at the suggestion of external factors.

In this context, our party needs an ideological and political restructuring, organizational expansion and a new action plan, with positions and initiatives that will mobilize society in a creative fighting stance and in pursuit of solutions.

We need self-definitions, plans, positions, initiatives and the creation of events with the aim of always having a creative competitive attitude and the pursuit of solutions.

We need political restructuring and forces that will lead to governance again. We have a responsibility to the country and the citizens. A. Tsipras made a brave self-criticism. Especially for the strategic defeat of simple proportionality and the need to regain trust and credibility in the politics of progressive forces.

This position of principle is an obligation for all those in a position of responsibility and especially for the supporters of simple proportionality, the denial of the political majority, the alternative solution and victory, in the logic of the second party strategy.

The country’s crisis is structural: in the economy and in the decision-making centers at state, government and party level.

The real economy which is the first national issue has been replaced by both the permanent debate about the deficit and the debt and the practices of Political Unionism without a strategic background. And this permanent practice, first of all, worked to the detriment of both the country in general and the Trade Union movement and its claims in particular. The state-fed parasitic economy has returned pan-European and some in the progressive space have not realized that countries that do not produce, do not export and do not tax will have leaderships that replace them politically, banks and stock markets.

And the leaders in question – among others – will even carry out the destruction of the legal order in international law and will baptize the law of the sea as a geopolitical dispute, as the Prime Minister attempted yesterday at the request of the Turkish leadership.

1. We immediately need a National debate, first of all, on at least ten major issues in the economy, infrastructure and our human and scientific potential. National debate with representatives of all political forces of the democratic arc and the productive classes.

2. We immediately need initiatives of a National, European and International nature because the international developments are already “here” and we must shape them, they are in the neighborhood super market with the interconnected cartels and the auction funds that do not even have a “Homeland”.

In the party field it is important to set aside the parasitic activities of the substitution of politics and intra-party democracy by organizational groups, which have locked the Left into minority politics of defeat and rallies of 7-12% for 50 years, in opposition to political radical forces that succeeded and established the principle of the Political majority.

I reserve the right to dialogue and the fruitful exchange of views on the way to the election of President, in addition to my political positions, to submit proposals for changes to the Statute, which will enshrine our internal party operation with values, principles and respect for the democratic order and structure which our conference will ratify.

We need, among other things:

Open, Political party as well as Popular and Electoral party. With citizens and fighters on an equal footing. Progressive citizens prefer justice over revenge. This year we have the 50th anniversary of the uprising of November 73. None of us wanted revenge. We wanted a fair trial for both our torturers and our military judges.
Trade union formations in the places where citizens and young people are active. Feudal practices belong to the pre-capitalist period.
Statutory changes as well as the institutionalization of the position of Vice President in the party.

We can do this with open discussions and joint decisions.

Ideologists participate and create Today and Tomorrow.

The vast majority of SYRIZA PS members operate with values ​​and principles.

And the values ​​are put into practice.

With friendly regards,

Stefanos Tzoumakas