By Penelope Galliou

The “cross-stabbing” and the civil war that has broken out in SYRIZA after what happened before, during, and still after the party congress, they may institutionally and centrally not be commented on by the government, but what is certain is that they do not go unnoticed by the Maximos Palace.

Where government officials are focusing is the institutional role of the official opposition, which is currently on “pause” as government sources commented, as it sinks into introversion and is locked in internal party impasses unable to carry out its institutional duties.

The spiral into which SYRIZA has fallen and has not managed to “release” even after its conference, blurs the opposition landscape even more, they estimate government sources, because to this picture they add the climate in PASOK which they also estimate that despite the losses of Koumoundourou, it is unable – at least in terms of polls – to liquidate them. So despite the fact that all measurements rank PASOK in third place, leaving behind SYRIZA, the same sources ultimately estimate that the overall picture of the two parties shows that they cannot mount a credible opposition argument and, by extension, constitute a credible alternative proposal for governance.

“Surely the image speaks for itself” commented the government representative in an interview, when asked about the situation prevailing in SYRIZA and focused on two points. “The first has to do with the fact that I think more important than the discussion about the persons is the discussion about the policies. Because I think what we saw these two and a half days in the closed Taekwondo Gym, in SYRIZA, is the result of what we lived and when SYRIZA governed and when SYRIZA was called upon to play the very important role of the official opposition and I am referring more to 2019 – 2023. That is, when we saw him doing the opposite of what he had promised, joining his coalition government with the extreme right, a very toxic discourse and to top it off this toxic discourse, as an official opposition, many times reaching the point of forming an opposition, even in the country,” said Mr. Marinakis. The second point he focused on concerns the alternative proposal that SYRIZA currently has to present, considering that the internal party debate is obviously for the members of a party absolutely respected, but the alternative proposal has greater importance for the citizens. “Unfortunately, at this moment, we are waiting for an alternative proposal from both the main opposition party and PASOK, and this is not good for the country,” the government representative observed.

Because in the frame of developments in SYRIZA, a central position is also held by Alexis Tsipras, government officials do not fail to remind that the polling disintegration of SYRIZA as well as the internal party “conflict” did not start in September, when Stefanos Kasselakis took over the reins of leadership, but had already started during the presidency of Alexis Tsipras, a fact which – as they comment – his companions themselves charge him for it. “Under his own leadership the party suffered continuous defeats from Kyriakos Mitsotakis and ended up with 17% in the 2023 national elections”. In fact, it is estimated that one of the sure losers of the SYRIZA conference is Alexis Tsipras himself, who, as they say, seems to have fallen into the trap he himself set with his sudden intervention in the fifth minute of the conference.