More “clouds” gathered over Greece’s main opposition political bloc, SYRIZA, on Thursday after eight members of a top party committee walked out of a meeting to express disagreement with party president Stefanos Kasselakis’ proposal to salvage a couple of party-affiliated media outlets.
Moreover, outspoken ex-minister and current MP Pavlos Polakis, who’s been expelled from the SYRIZA Parliamentary group but remains a member of the political secretariat, raised the explosive issue of the party’s leadership, essentially taking aim at Kasselakis’ position. “Today’s leadership cannot provide a political solution; there must be change, and I will contribute to this end.”
The media in question are the daily newspaper ‘Avghi’ and the news radio station ‘Sto Kokkino’, with reports noting that employees are now owed two months back pay. Both decidedly left-leaning media are also burdened with debts, high operating costs and low revenue generation.
Two of the political secretariat committee members who walked out, Olga Gerovassili and Katerina Notopoulou, are serving Parliament deputies, while the others include past MPs and ministers.
According to party sources in the wake of the latest SYRIZA “turbulence”, Kasselakis proposed funding of the two partisan media outlets even with bank borrowing, thereby ensuring that back wages to be paid and financing a a more generous severance package for staffers willing to resign.
Kasselakis emerged as a distinct political ‘unknown’ to win an internal party election last year and succeed former PM Alexis Tsipras.
On Thursday afternoon, the eight dissenting cadres of the leftist party also circulated a petition criticizing Kasselakis for not providing what they called a viable solution, while charging what they called “a coverup of the facts related to the party’s finances, despite the increase in revenues over the past year.”
In a later announcement, in the form of a lengthy post on his FB page, Kasselakis also responded to another ‘protest letter’ by a total of 87 SYRIZA cadres, calling on the latter to “decide if you belong in SYRIZA or not”.
He also challenged potential rivals and critics to table a motion for another internal party election for its helm, while at the same time clarifying that he’s not responding to Polakis’ quip.
