SYRIZA: Tsipras prevails and the bet of impressions

By Niki Zorba

The time for SYRIZA to hold its third conference has come. In the midst of “uplift” for the popular demolition of the government but also necessary internal party compromises, in order to lead the party – as coordinated and united as possible – to its congress.

Disagreements

Disagreements on both sides are a given: The majority agrees with Alexis Tsipras’s proposals for both the election of a president and a Central Committee from the party base, while the minority (“Umbrella”) disagrees in principle with the presidential proposals and openly reproaches and at every opportunity the president to transform SYRIZA into a leader-centered party, by abolishing accountability and altering his physiognomy.

Clarification: Where the “majority” does not count in the current situation only the traditional “presidential” (Members Movement), but all the other internal Party Trends (Gefyra, RENE, Pasokogenes, DIMAR) that came together a few days before the congress and “Umbrella”, with a common “yes” to the proposals of Alexis Tsipras for “opening” of the party at the base but also its “expansion”, both practical and ideological.

For the minority, the turn of SYRIZA through Alexis Tsipras towards the Center remains casus belli (in a way) and they insist that there is a question of the ideological identity of the party: It is not center-left, centrist, social democratic, but “left”.

Mr. Tsipras has gone through many such internal party storms in the last three years and discussions after discussions about the ideological position of SYRIZA. He has clearly set his outline: Middle space, Center-Left and Left, the part that was covered in any case by the former state PASOK, before its downfall and the filling of the gap by SYRIZA.

In order to “escape” the internal party murmurs from time to time, he has invented various rhetorical tricks, of which the term “Left” is never absent, when at least addressing an internal party audience. He does the same now, talking about the “modern Left”, where he includes in his analyzes “realism”.

Recently, however, on Thursday, at the meeting of the SYRIZA Political Council, where the “Umbrella”‘s disagreements over the president’s decisions were restated, Alexis Tsipras returned to the atmosphere of his first statement on the night of the 2019 national elections: I have a history debt to change SYRIZA. A few days ago, George Papandreou had “borrowed” his central pre-election slogan: “Either we change or we sink”.

Mr. Tsipras’s message was understandable. Nobody pretends (within SYRIZA at least) that he has not understood it: The party turns to the Center and tries to enlarge. Theoretically, bilateral. Besides, betting on the compliment of the middle class voters, who turned their backs on him and supported the N.D. of Kyriakos Mitsotakis, the president of SYRIZA has intensified his reports on the need for its support but also his self-critical findings for its unfair and burdened taxation.

Correlations

The data are as follows for SYRIZA until the conference. Alexis Tsipras proposed that the internal party elections for the election of president and Central Committee be held on May 15. Those who register even on the day of the voting will have the right to vote at the ballot box for the election of a president. The same right is not given for the election of the Central Committee. Those who had registered by March 21 are voting. A “compromise” proposal, submitted by himself, as a sign of good (companion) will. The ballot box to decide whether his proposal is approved will be set up on the third day of the conference, ie Saturday, April 16.

The internal party relations have been judged in favor of Alexis Tsipras, an opera’s obviously confessed by “Umbrella”. His prevalence rate is overwhelming, but his bet was not to “get” the conference. His sovereignty was a given from the beginning. The bet for Alexis Tsipras in particular and SYRIZA in general is the number of members who will come to vote for him at the polls on May 15th. And this is because it is “measured” in terms of impressions with the respective internal party procedures of KINAL recently and of N.D. SYRIZA’s “defense line” in this regard is that it is a condition for the right to vote in the presidential election to be a member of the party and not a “friend or passerby”. This does not change, however, whether the number will count to win, or not, the impressions.