With the speech of the president Stefanos Kasselakis, the crucial meeting of the SYRIZA-PS Central Committee will be opened.

Stefanos Kasselakis will ask the Central Committee for an internal party referendum on the removal of the four executives he has referred to the party’s Ethics Committee, Nikos Fili, Panos Skourletis, Dimitris Vitsa and Stefanos Tzoumakas.

According to information, after the appointment of Kasselakis to the K.E., Efi Ahtsioglou’s group will request a discussion and vote here and now on the Kasselakis speech and the referendum, with “Umbrella” drafting the above proposal.

Detailed text of the contribution of the “Ahtsioglou team” to the KE

SYRIZA-PS is facing a crisis of dissolution

SYRIZA – PS is in a political, ideological and institutional crisis unprecedented in its history. A crisis that has acquired dissolution characteristics. After the double defeat of the parliamentary elections in May/June, the process for the presidential election and the further weakening of our forces in the local elections, our party continues to follow a downward spiral of introversion that threatens not only its cohesion, but its very existence. of. The great expectations of sweeping changes and impressive recovery cultivated by the current President of the party, were not confirmed in real life.

Calling for deletions by referendum exceeded any limit of democratic functioning. This proposal and the political staff who inspired it and support it must be rejected by the entire membership and party bodies. It is the extreme limit of the logic of the anti-SYRIZA front within the party, which the President himself describes as “sick”. Faced with the inability to produce political content, they invest in division and ultimately dissolution.
The crisis of SYRIZA-PS is not simply related to the trials of a party. It is a crisis that directly concerns the democratic functioning of the political system and Greek society. On the one hand, we have a Right-wing government that unimpededly promotes a policy of widening inequalities, devaluing and deregulating work, aggressive neoliberalism, collapsing democracy and institutional safeguards while demonstrating a complete inability to deal with the crises related to climate change. And on the other hand, we have an official opposition on the verge of liquidation. This image allows – and this is the main thing that should concern us – the Right to set its agenda and dominate ideologically and politically without a real counterpoint.

Politics at the wheel: only answer to global obsolescence

At this moment, SYRIZA-PS has to choose between two ways to interpret the crisis it is in and to look for the corresponding way out through it. These are two competing options.

The first is the one that builds the leadership team around the party President and is summed up in the conspiracy theory of the internal enemy: dark subversives do not allow the party to implement its policy. The problem of SYRIZA – PS is not a problem of strategy, personality and program, it is not a political and ideological problem but it is summed up in the subversive practice of those who criticize the current leadership.
All this leads to the transformation of SYRIZA-PS from an open and pluralist party of the modern left into a hybrid political body that on the one hand will resort to appeals of anti-systemicism and on the other hand will be completely powerless to question basic systemic economic and political choices. In a body that will sink into disrepute and ridicule.
The other option is to soberly, seriously and self-critically discuss the causes of the latest negative results. Obviously, this discussion must be honest about the structural weaknesses that our project has had throughout its duration, such as our weakness in mass spaces. Obviously, we must look critically at the period of 19-23 which led us to the heavy defeat and the current crisis. But in political terms and not of an authoritarian Bonapartism that hunts internal enemies to hide its own nakedness. However, we cannot under any circumstances allow this account to be made with the hegemonic anti-SYRIZA narrative reproduced by the current president and his leadership team. A debate that cancels what we achieved as a government in 15-19 and cancels the entire party and the political staff who selflessly fought this battle.
We have often referred to the society of low expectations as one of the key elements in the prevalence of conservative forces. At this moment, however, we face an even deeper problem since SYRIZA-PS itself has turned into a “party of low expectations”. From the goal of progressive governance we have been locked in the battle for second place in a “1.5 party” political system. The root of this impasse lies in the political content, the substance of politics and our inability to credibly construct ambition and a stream of social change. As long as the new leadership group of SYRIZA-PS refuses to recognize the above and continues the witch hunt, the party is locked in a one-way path of dissolution.

Time to change course

The issue should be how SYRIZA-PS will lead a majority stream in Greek society.

If there is a path for the reconstruction of the Left and the progressive forces, it goes through a modern political proposal. The main axis of this proposal remains the social issue. In the foreground we must put work but also access to those goods that make up the very concept of citizen: education, health, housing. Not with a reason to “defend” lost possessions. More with a plan for the total re-establishment of a universal right which even in the days of economic development did not exist.

The demand for social justice today is inextricably linked with the demand for climate justice. The demand for climate justice and energy democracy, for a different way of organizing the production model itself, is ultimately a demand for life itself. All this means a completely different role for the state, a central planning and development role with essential elements of democratic participation.

The third field is that of Democracy. Whether we refer to issues of the rule of law such as wiretapping, or to issues of dealing with the rise of far-right and even neo-Nazi forces and the gross instrumentalization of the immigration issue by the ND government, we see a constant shift towards the conservative right. Democracy, the fight for a universal rule of law, anti-fascism and the front with the extreme right, gender issues are not secondary political fronts.
This is the only way we can inspire again and win the battle of participation. Rising abstention rates are a strong indicator of the limits of the architecture of the current political system. The “outside” is constantly growing, depriving resources and possibilities for a progressive left project. Without social mobilization, no progressive and left-wing project can be implemented.

SYRIZA overturned political associations at the moment it formulated a big idea in a condition of crisis and low expectations: the left in power. To respond to Right-wing hegemony, we must oppose an overall value and ideological model that will conflict with them. In order to re-inspire Greek society, we must have a coherent narrative about how we imagine this country in the future. In order to be useful, SYRIZA-PS must change course and put forward the great bet of our time: how society will exploit to its advantage the great, shocking, possibilities that open before it. How the socialism of the 21st century with democracy and freedom will not be an abstract slogan, but a material act in today.

Our goal can and must remain the ambition to change the world in the present tense and therefore the strategic and tactical movements that will be able to form progressive majorities. The assumption of government highlighted the power that a leftist and progressive current can have when it does not hide from difficulties but takes responsibility for change.

Respect for our history, respect for leftist and progressive citizens

The crisis of confidence has been exacerbated even more by the political choices of the new leadership group and the personal positions of the president, which often contradict the programmatic positions of SYRIZA-PS, while violations of the statute are also frequent.

How can you convince yourself that you are fighting for the rule of law and the observance of the rules of democracy when you do not respect it in your own political space? The logic of “we decide and order” is foreign to the society we are fighting for. Limits exceeded. We must collectively put an end to the downward spiral.