Five candidates for the leadership of the leftist SYRIZA party in Greece are vowing to reverse the decline in the party’s popularity following successive election defeats.
After the departure of its leader and former PM Alexis Tsipras in June, the party will hold its congress on September 2 and the elections for a new president on September 10.
At the June 2023 Greek legislative election, SYRIZA received a record low percentage of 17.83% since the May 2012 Greek legislative election.
Tsipras announced his resignation 4 days after the elections on 29 June 2023. He stated that the party needs, “profound renewal and refoundation.” He added “the negative [election] result can – and must – become the beginning” of a new cycle for the party.
The five candidates for SYRIZA leadership
Former labor minister Efi Achtsioglou, 38, is pegged as one of the more popular candidates.
A lawyer by training during her tenure in the Tsipras cabinet between 2016 and 2019 she was linked with the expansion of collective bargaining, the raise of the minimum wage by 11% and by 27% for young people, the abolishment of sub-minimum wage, and the decrease in unemployment.
Euclid Tsakalotos, 63, is an economist and politician who was Minister of Finance of Greece from 2015 to 2019. He is also a member of the Central Committee of SYRIZA.
Tsakalotos, who has been described as a “Marxist”, replaced the flamboyant Yanis Varoufakis after the 2015 referendum on the bailout agreement between Greece’s creditors and Alexis Tsipras.
He followed a less confrontational policy towards the creditors and signed a third bailout agreement that eventually ensured Greece exited the bailout era.
One of the more controversial candidates in the running, Tsipras’ right-hand man and former digital governance minister Nikos Pappas, 47.
They first met at a meeting of Synaspismos Youth when they were 19. He later became Tsipras’ chief of staff.
On 24 February 2023, Pappas was convicted by a Special Tribunal to two years in prison for the crime of breach of duty relating to his handling of television broadcast licenses during his tenure in the cabinet from 2015 to 2019.
The election’s surprise candidate is 77-year-old Stefanos Tzoumakas a former member of socialist PASOK. A firebrand politician is regarded as an outsider in the party,
The fifth candidate is the 36-year-old US-educated businessman Stefanos Kasselakis, who officially launched his campaign for the leadership on Tuesday, just two weeks before the election.
Kasselakis, a former Goldman Sachs employee and a volunteer in Joe Biden’s election campaign in 2008 is a new face in Greek politics.
Born in Athens, with roots in Crete he is an atypical candidate for a leftist party. He is openly gay and he promises to bring a new era of renewal for SYRIZA.