A now independent MEP elected with leftist SYRIZA in 2019 last week launched into a full frontal attack against the party’s leader, Stefanos Kasselakis, amid a now urgent letter by 17 out of 24 members of SYRIZA’s political secretariat to convene the body in the face of a questionnaire being circulated on the latter’s initiative.
Stelios Kouloglou, a high-profile television journalist and presenter, resigned from the party after Kasselakis, a political newcomer and former junior Goldman Sachs trader, won an internal party election last autumn. Since then Kouloglou has served in the European Parliament as an independent.
“The party is headed for a catastrophe, an end that has the characteristics of a calamity,” Kouloglou charged, adding that Kasselakis’ election as SYRIZA leader was a “group suicide” and its end.
“This is what happens in closed systems that believe in something intensely. SYRIZA believed that it would win the elections (in May and June 2024), and when it lost with a 20%-point difference a major crisis erupted. The party lost its ideology and its two binding elements: Tsipras and power,” he said, referring to former SYRIZA leader and prime minister (2015-2019) Alexis Tsipras.
