The collapse of the Greek left shows it needs renewal

the first one stake The lowest level since the restoration of democracy in Greece in 1974: only 52.83% of voters He decided to exercise his right to vote, which corresponds to only 5 out of 10 million voters. latter fragmentation Proportion of progressive voters showing a clear erosion of the Syriza consensus.

various parties they took over the discontent with the left party. became one of them Plefsi Eleftherias (Liberty Course), which received 3.17% (8 seats) and entered Parliament for the first time. Born in 2016 and accused of not having a real political program, it was founded by Zoe Konstantopoulou. former SYRIZA leadership and during his term as prime minister (2015-2019), one of Tsipras’ biggest opponents, he accepted the austerity measures demanded by the European Union (EU).

Separation

The result of this was even more relevant. Pasok socialistsAfter a surge in the 2015 general election (when they barely got the 6.29% support), it resurfaced in the last two election rounds and won about 12%.

third party MeRA25, Tsipras’ former Economy Minister economist Yanis Varoufakis received 2.49% of the vote (129,859 voters) and was excluded from Parliament. room communist stainless between PPE Although they have never experienced big fluctuations, this rate, which rose to 7.69% in the last election, is about three points more than in the previous elections in July 2019.

The result was one political map almost entirely Greek painted bluethe color of New Democracy, except for the small region Rhodope region; that is, seven more regional administrative units than right-facing compared to 2019. This includes all four units of the ‘red’ island. Crete, but here, adding all the parties, the left continues to get more votes than the right. ND also won in Evros, where many reports of attacks on immigrants came in.

difficult renewal

As this starting point, Tsipras himself on Sunday admitted defeat and stated that Syriza needs “new” people. The leftist even explained his position and said that he would submit to “trial of affiliates”. The problem is No clear candidate for successorthat could open a long transition or set in motion a process of transformation that does not directly affect the party itself, but affects some his pictures.

This is because it also refers to the nature of Syriza’s original name, the Coalition of the Radical Left. that a party born in 2004 like complex merge Socialists, Trotskyists, Maoists and ecologists who, after the fall of the USSR, refused to follow the KKE and its principles close to Moscow.

chiprasit was in those years main adhesive The group that left its future in the air should Syriza jump ship in a moment of difficulty. “Tsipras is likely to face new questions about his future, because Tsipras has no clear potential successor. charismatic former leader communist”, commented the political scientist Yorgos Patsambekis in this direction.

But Antonis Karampatzos, a professor of private law at the Athens Law School of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, also pointed to the Syriza leader’s mistakes. “Which lost happened in Syriza a programmatic discourse serious, then so many years of crisispeople can value safety far more than new ideas and experiments,” Karampatzos told BIRN.