By Antonis Anzoletou

SYRIZA without Pavlos Polakis would hardly have been imagined some time ago. The unprovoked attack he launched on his colleague Adoni Georgiadis was the occasion for him to receive a “red card” from Stefanos Kasselakis after many complaints, meetings and complaints from his colleagues in the institutions. Whatever he was the “strategist” of his victory last year in September, bringing him to the presidency of SYRIZA. The warnings were many and the complaints of the MPs-executives accumulated.

In January, he argued against the bill for same-sex couples. At a meeting of the Political Secretariat, he had stated that “we will not be able to go to our mountain villages”, wanting to say that he will not be able to explain to his voters the feasibility of SYRIZA’s support for this specific arrangement. A month later, the member of parliament from Chania “pulled the rope” after abstaining from the vote, defying the line given by the president to approve the bill. In the same month, an episode had followed between Stefanos Kasselakis and Pavlos Polakis: “If you want to leave, leave”, the president told him at the meeting of the board of K.O. The MP from Chania had criticized the way SYRIZA opposed the government on the issue of armaments. In March, Stefanos Kasselakis took the first disciplinary measures by removing him from the position of coordinator of the Parliamentary Project Audit Committees, while this month the president was forced to apologize to Maria Syregela for the way the former deputy health minister had spoken to her.

The “equation” is not simple from now on. Now the Stefanos Kasselakis he will have against him the unpredictable behavior of Pavlos Polakis. The former deputy health minister remains in the party and in the institutions, since there was no other announcement from Koumoundourou. Does this mean that the president apart from the “87” has opened a new front against him? Yesterday during his brief presence in the parliamentary group that was meeting – although Sokratis Famellos asked him to leave – he said: “I was and will be SYRIZA, some people don’t want me, I know who. I’m leaving so I don’t say anything that will make things worse. Only the people decide. I am a loyal spokesperson of SYRIZA”.

What is certain is that the specific move of Stefanos Kasselakis was a message to all dissenters that he will respond to unacceptable behavior. And it doesn’t matter to which camp he belongs who falls into some serious misconduct. Stefanos Kasselakis, in his statement to K.O. yesterday, chose not to mention the issue, but only to ring a general “bell”. “There is no room for tactics and individual agendas… And among us there is no one infallible but I am sure there is no one deceitful either.” Symbolically at some point Mr. Kasselakis, according to information, went and sat next to Athina Linou.