Let’s not criminalize meetings between people who have been friends for years, said Panos Skourletis to SKAI when asked to comment on last night’s meeting between Tsipras and Sakellaridis in a tavern in Nea Smyrni.

When asked if Alexis Tsipras should have intervened in the process of electing a new president in SYRIZA, he said that he “maintained a neutral stance in the process. He did well, because the other would have the character of handing over a ring.”

However, he added that “this attitude would be more credible if, at the given moment when the Kasselakis side used his name as a tool, he intervened and said I don’t allow you to say that I planted you.”

For her Kasselakis statement yesterday about the “pillow” Mr. Skourletis commented that it “hit Tsipras in the heart”.

“He completely dismantles the Tsipras prime ministership and embraces the arguments of the other side. It is the anti-Syria propaganda that existed from the ND”.
He continued: “He said it was a rote choice. The harshest memorandum option would be to not have the cushion and to have a credit line with a new memorandum. Isn’t this a denial of SYRIZA’s course?”

Regarding Stefanos Kasselakis, he said: “He remains the leader of today’s SYRIZA, legally elected according to the statute, but politically delegitimized.”

He added that the party is in an accelerated transition to a center-right formation: “SYRIZA as we knew it is ending, it has come full circle,” he said.

He repeated that the Kasselakis speech at the KE was “harmful to the left and traditions” and added that Mr. Kasselakis brought SYRIZA to a state of extinction.

“The displacement of SYRIZA creates a vacuum that needs to be filled, to create a political space,” he said and added: “We are not interested in announcing the creation of a party, we want to discuss with non-members, to give answers.”

Finally, he estimated that the mobility within SYRIZA will not stop