Deposed SYRIZA leader Stefanos Kasselakis will reportedly again vie for the leftist party’s leadership, days after a majority of central committee members voted in favor of a censure motion against him and one year since he succeeded Alexis Tsipras to the post in a surprise victory over handful of veteran cadres.
Kasselakis arrived in Athens from the island of Spetses early Thursday after a series of contacts, most by video calls, over the past few days with his closest allies. He subsequently held successive meetings with SYRIZA deputies and other party officials.
Adding more drama to the latest “splintering” trends within the main opposition party, which has now fallen to third place in the latest opinion polls, is an abrupt holding of another meeting by a party institution, the political secretariat for Thursday afternoon. The meeting was originally scheduled for next Tuesday.
Meanwhile, many Kasselakis supporters have waged a PR campaign over the past day, charging that the vote and decision to oust the one-time Goldman Sachs junior trader and ertswhile shipping executive conflicted the party’s charter. Along those lines, media reports have the deposed party leader’s supporters ready to table the specific objection at an upcoming central committee meeting next month.
In a later development, members of the political secretariat overwhelmingly voted – 17 in favor, one against, one abstention – to validate the vote of the central committee, something that Kasselakis and his supporters fought against.
Reports suggest Kasselakis is measuring his support across the country from the party’s grassroots, political think tanks, and allies to determine the extent of their displeasure over his abrupt ouster through what critics called a “coup-like” process. The local SYRIZA organization in the first election district of Athens has already issued a resolution backing him, deriding his dismissal as “unprecedented” in Greek politics after the restoration of democracy in 1974.
