In his open issues SYRIZA-PShe mentioned in an extensive interview with the expatriate radio station “Worldher New Yorkthe party president Stefanos Kasselakis.

He said about the collaborations in the Center-Left:

“In the first days after the European elections, a discussion began about the fusion in the Center-Left which had, in my opinion, predetermined characteristics.

In other words, why not let the bases of the two major parties of the broader Left choose what they want and start this process, as I said in my speech in Parliament, in a way that is programmatic, that is, cooperation in proposals for laws and of course where we can in trade unionism, activism and so on. This is the right way, and I believe that the right thing to do would be to let our fellow citizens and the party officials and the presidents of the two parties proceed with the corresponding bottom-up cooperation processes. We are not going to freeze the relegation of SYRIZA to the grand governing faction that will unite the entire Center Left to wait for what others will do.

Regarding “black money” and the statements of Evangelos Apostolakis, he said:

“I don’t remember exactly what the exact statement of Mr. Apostolakis is. However, I had personally mentioned the issue of ‘black money’ quite a lot before the elections and I was saying this before the elections in the past weeks. How can you expect change in our country when you elect the same and the same and do not want transparency in political money?

Let’s start from the SW. If you look at New Democracy’s debt, every year it increases by about 30 million, their interest, the total, is piling up, after all, it is increasing. So how can this party, which does more expensive online campaigning than any other party in Germany with a much larger population, do it and pay so many consultants abroad and so on and at the same time its debt is increasing?

Let me remind you that Kyriakos Mitsotakis during his presidency of New Democracy has doubled the debt of the party. Let’s talk about managerial ability, let’s remind. So I’m saying something very simple. If the New Democracy really wants us to bring transparency to our country, let’s start with their debt regulation, which they must bring out into public view. At the moment, the Greek citizen does not know the exact debt regulation of the ND”.

Regarding the departure of the three executives – Dionysis Tebonera, Antonis Kotsakas, Haris Tsioka – from the party bodies he said:

“For those who don’t wish to participate in instruments, obviously I can’t force someone to stay.”

He referred to the reorganization of the party:

“From there, I think that what I wrote, what I had said at the February Congress, what I had said in my election platform for the presidency of the party, was exactly for a radical renewal of SYRIZA, structurally and organically. So, when 86% of SYRIZA members in the questionnaire we did in February tell you that they want radical changes and 83% tell you that the institutions do not meet their expectations, they go on to say that we have to change the structure of our party. And at the end of the day the base will decide. And I don’t think we should ever fear the base.

At the end of the day, my sincere intention is that we can have an independent, strong, modern, very progressive party, which will govern and change Greece. SYRIZA’s role is not simply to manage Greece. It is to radically change the pathologies of this country. We are not a systemic party, we should never be.”

Regarding the developments in “Avgi” he said:

“It’s an issue that has weighed heavily on me for months, because I knew that the funding is being cut in half, from about eight million to four million, and three and a half of the four million is going to party media. Unfortunately we have reached a situation that does not give us many options. People now read their information, their information, mainly online. ‘Avgi’ does not stop its daily activity online. In the print edition, every day, we are losing money. And in printing alone, we are losing money every day. This is the reality.

I believe there are ways to help with a transition, legally I mean, not with other sources of funding, which I mentioned in my post. And this way, the first way is with the people of SYRIZA and the Left to make a donation to our party so that we can support, on syriza.gr where it says ‘support financially’. Today I will take this step. I will donate the maximum allowed by law, which is 20,000 euros per year per individual. And I sincerely ask those who participate in the party bodies and our parliamentarians to do the same to the best of their ability, as they can.

And let me also remind you that the decision to close the daily newspaper Avgi was taken by the Political Secretariat of SYRIZA before my election as President, my predecessor simply did not implement this decision”.

Regarding the result of the European elections, he said:

“SYRIZA did decently. Apparently it has suffered two splits in the 9 months I have been president. A quarter of our parliamentary group left and failed to elect an MEP, it wouldn’t even succeed in electing a member of the Hellenic Parliament with such a percentage, although it was essentially almost the entire SYRIZA cabinet from the 2015 period until 2019. This I believe once again speaks volumes for itself. But we have to move on. It’s not the resume that nice they got 2.4 plus 14.9 equal more or less 17.3, so close to the percentages of the national elections. We cannot compare dissimilar things. And the fact is that a few months ago and after my challenge at the congress, SYRIZA was the third party in the polls, it was in single digits and we moved it to a clear second place, much closer to the ND.

When he was elected to the position of president, SYRIZA had just left ND at 41% and as the official opposition was at 18%. Our own opposition reduced New Democracy to 28%. With precision, with taxation, with the arrogance we displayed. It doesn’t mean that he fully reaped the absentee voters, but it does mean that we showed something. We broke this omnipotence of Kyriakos Mitsotakis, we showed that the king is naked and this will continue. And I believe that the countdown for Kyriakos Mitsotakis has already begun.”

Regarding the accusations he receives about a “one man show”, he replied:

“There is no party that is a one man show. But a leader of a political space must also take initiatives. That is why we are electing a president and directly electing a president from the grassroots, instead of from the institutions, which is the decision of Alexis Tsipras and the 2022 SYRIZA congress. The party president must be in contact with the basis, it must give the clear ideological mark and it must inspire that it can apply and execute what it presents programmatically to the world”.

“We must reduce VAT on essential goods – Competition Commission understaffed”

Mr. Kasselakis estimated that only 20% of the population is prosperous and added:

“We have tabled a law proposal and the main thing we have to do is to reduce the VAT on basic goods, on food, as Spain has done successfully. But by the way, all this talk about whether or not the VAT reduction is channeled into prices or not to diffuse that reduction is to say that there are oligopolies. Let them apply the free market rules they preach, those of the ND and control these oligopolies. It is not possible for the same detergent to be more expensive in Greece than in Germany, which have double and triple the wages of Greece.”

He reported to the Competition Commission saying:

“She is understaffed and when she went to touch on some issues, we saw her head leave a few months ago. We have proposed reducing the tax on fuel to the lowest rate allowed by the European Union. We have the issue of the ceiling on the profit margin in electricity. At the moment the energy market in Greece is not working properly. We are talking about electricity, a public good and the profits these companies make are outrageous. And obviously in a SYRIZA government these gains will decrease rapidly.

And there must be a public pillar in the electricity in our opinion, as well as the networks, the electric networks must belong to the taxpayer, because the network is also of geopolitical importance. So there are proposals mainly in fuel and food and electricity that can give a great relief to the world. There are counterweights. We saw that where ND was mocking ‘where will you find the money’, it suddenly found one of our solutions to implement it.”