Drawn “daggers” will not, after all, be sheathed on Thursday by the five candidates in the latest leadership race for main opposition SYRIZA party, including recently deposed president Stefanos Kasselakis.
According to later reports on Thursday afternoon, the initiative fell through due to unclarified disagreements.
The would-be meeting of the five was proposed on Wednesday by former minister and current MP Pavlos Polakis, one of the more outspoken, controversial and combative deputies in Parliament. Polakis is among the five candidates.
Media reports during the day had Kasselakis initially accepting the proposal for a get-together of the five, along with Parliamentary group head Nikos Pappas and party secretary Rania Sviggou, the duo now essentially acting as the caretaker leadership of the leftist party.
Kasselakis reportedly had only asked for a change of time.
Indicative of the development is the fact that a meeting of SYRIZA’s Parliamentary group, which was expected to meet on Thursday, was first postponed.
Other candidates are MEP Nikos Farantouris, MP Socrates Famelos, the up-until-recently Parliamentary group head, and television actor Apostolos Gletzos, who has dabbled in politics before, serving as mayor of the south-central coastal town of Stylida and vying for the regional government.
Kasselakis served as SYRIZA president for roughly a year after winning a leadership race in September 2023 as a distinct unknown and underdog. He was deposed last month after a majority of members of the party’s central committee voted in favor of a motion of censure against him.
Kasselakis submits wealth and means statement
Meanwhile, all five candidates have submitted wealth and means statements to the party’s secretariat.
Kasselakis, a long-time expatriate in the United States and one-time junior Goldman Sachs trader, declared nearly 1.68 million US dollars in incomes for 2023, of which more than 70,000 USD was from leasing.
His shares in municipal bonds were valued at 3.5 million USD, along with shares worth 326,270 USD in the dry bulk shipping company Breakwave. Cash deposits exceeded 50,000 euros.
Real estate declared by Kasselakis are a summer residence on the upscale island of Spetses, an apartment in the Neos Kosmos district of central Athens inherited from his parents, 5.5 hectares of land and a residence in New York State that’s offered for lease.
Obligations he listed included payments o a 1.65-million-dollar mortgage held by Cross Country and nearly 79,000 USD to a Miami-area car dealership.
Another corporate entity listed on his statement is Osios LLC, with a capital of 500,000 USD, the vehicle used to lend SYRIZA money last year.
