With thanks to his co-candidacy for the presidency of the SYRIZA PS, Efi Ahtsioglou, he began his speech at Permanent Conference of the party, the candidate Stefanos Kasselakis. I appreciate her very much. I admire you both as a woman politician and as a mother for what you do,” said Mr. Kasselakis, saying that “at some point our political opponents will understand that we are too tough to die.”

Mr. Kasselakis spoke of a SYRIZA of the modern Left “against injustice and inequalities, for the defense of rights, for sustainable development and environmental protection, for the world of work and healthy entrepreneurship, for the defense of national integrity, but also of national sovereign rights based on international law”, emphasizing that “the day after my election to the leadership of SYRIZA, 41% ends. As alibi and as reality. The day after my election, SYRIZA of the Modern Left starts. Open to its members. In the society. To the new generation. Within the movements”.

Mr. Kasselakis said that “if you want SYRIZA to return to the safe harbor of left-wing purity, I’m probably not the right candidate. If you want a party that will be between 10% and 15% to cooperate – offering its left-wing purity – with the center-right PASOK, so that we can build a so-called centrist government, I’m probably not the most suitable.” He argued that there is only the path of self-reliant victory. He said that “Alexis made SYRIZA big, talking about a government of the Left, when everyone was laughing” and “maybe even some of SYRIZA didn’t believe it and maybe they didn’t even want it”. He noted that now “so again we have to follow this path, to talk about a SYRIZA government, about an independent modern Left, which will occupy all the space from the left to the democratic center”. He said that the “first time Left” took the first step. He met with History, he was furiously beaten, he was caught. The “new time” Left is on our own backs. And this time he will not be defeated. Will win”.

The candidate for the presidency of SYRIZA commented that “the big interests” of the country are “furious” with him, because “they cannot understand how a man who on the surface should belong to them, decides to return from abroad to expose them and beat them.” He said that he fully expresses the values ​​of the Left, “an attitude of life for justice, tolerance, and protection of the weak”.

He also mentioned that in Greece, its people are not given opportunities and young people take the path of alienation. He added that Greece is not a conservative society and that “Greeks as a whole are open-hearted people, with love for the history of their country and their neighbor”. Mr. Kasselakis noted that he is running for president “because Greek men and women deserve a chance at their own Greek Dream.” He emphasized that “we have before us a rotten state and a right-wing parastatal, a Lernaean Hydra and as many others caress its heads , we can and must burn the beast”. He argued that “there is nothing more patriotic than protecting the lives of your country. And give them in practice an honest, clear path to the Greek Dream” and that “only in this way will the struggles of the Left transform into the emancipation of every Greek woman, every Greek”. He spoke about the “Greek nightmare”, commenting that “Mr. Mitsotakis’ staff state fulfills this role, to make the social traffic policeman, with different speed limits for the upper and lower, with different traffic codes for the upper and lower , by transforming rights into something that is not self-evident but negotiable”.

“We want progressive, radical, mass boulevards,” said Mr. Kasselakis, calling on everyone within the party to join him in his vision.

Speaking about the operation of the party, he argued that SYRIZA-PS is not about rules, but about internal democracy. He said that the biggest cut he will make “as president, will be the direct contact with the members, the groups of Members, who “will immediately become factories of policy production and relays of political thought”. “Starting with primary ballots everywhere – let the members themselves decide who their candidates for parliament, mayors and regional governors will be,” he said, adding that “SYRIZA will cease to be the party of lobbying, the party of insiders of rivalries, of personal egos, and it will become the party of society everywhere”. He added that members will contact and receive a response from the party leadership. He emphasized that “you will give me the authority, the power, you will control me” and that he “in the name of the popular struggles of the Left and the new popular struggle that we are starting now against the mechanisms, I will not tolerate any patronage and any undermining by nobody”.

Mr. Kasselakis said that after the bankruptcy of the country by the parties “of the once strong bipartisanship”, they left the Left of SYRIZA and a new leader, Alexis Tsipras, to manage the bankrupt country, “they set the trap of the left parenthesis, but they managed to survive” and get the country out of the memorandums. He added that “the old political system recovered” and that he himself “after the first painful defeat, I stood by Alexis”. He commented that “I saw firsthand who stood up to him and who reacted to the opening to society, considering it a ‘right-wing deviation’.” He commented today that they themselves consider his own candidacy a right-wing deviation, adding that he himself is the exact opposite. “because a right-wing deviation is ultimately what benefits the right of Mr. Mitsotakis. A rightward deviation is what will keep Mitsotakis in power and SYRIZA a harmless compadre. Harmless to the system.” He noted that “left-radical divergence is not what serves the orthodoxy of the left, but what can defeat the right. Ideologically and politically”.

He mentioned that he himself is accused of being an element of metapolitics, but he has heard little about the substance. “So my own political essence is first of all that I did not make any agreement to be a candidate for President. With noone”. He said that he was accused of being an agent of the Americans, a planter of capitalism, a representative of post-democracy, to comment that “they probably fear that SYRIZA can rise, that it can win back the right of Kyriakos Mitsotakis, that it will stop the monotonous argument of the destroyers : “What are you complaining about? 41%…”