“New kid on the block” for leadership causes war within opposition

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This is our weekly round-up from Greece.

Fairly unknown even to SYRIZA members, Greek-American businessman Stefanos Kasselakis finishes first in the first ballot for the new SYRIZA leader with 45% of the vote. Kasselakis had announced his candidacy only some 20 days before.

His victory triggered a ‘civil war’ within SYRIZA, exposing a deep identity problem for the formerly leftist party. Some praise Kasselakis for reviving the interest in the leadership race; others see him as serving the interests of a specific fraction within the party and possibly as the person who came to dissolve SYRIZA and give rise to the ‘Greek dems.’

While SYRIZA ‘comrades’ were fighting each other, and the whole country was consuming the ‘Kasselakis serial,’ the ND government passed yet another regressive bill swiping labor rights and practically abolishing the right to strike.

How to become a party leader by using social media (not)

Something unprecedented in the Greek and possibly the international political scene has happened: A 35-year-old Greek-American living in the USA without any previous political experience or track record is set to become the leader of the country’s main opposition, center-left SYRIZA party. Stefanos Kasselakis came first among five candidates in the Sunday ballot, receiving some 45% of the vote. He will compete in the second round with Efi Achtsioglou, a 38-year-old lawyer who has been active on the left since her teenage years and served as Minister of Labour in Tsipras’ cabinet. Achtsioglou received 36% of the vote. Some 149,000 citizens voted.

Kasselakis, an openly gay former ship investor and Goldman Sachs trader, reasonably unknown in Greece even to SYRIZA voters, announced just on 29 August on social media his candidacy for SYRIZA leadership.

How can this be happening? We are still struggling to explain it.

After SYRIZA percentages dropped dramatically in the May-June National Elections, Tsipras resigned, and the party announced they would hold elections for their new leader on 10 September. After the Thessaly Plain flooding, the elections were suspended for the 17th. All party members had the right to vote, even those who would register on the day of the ballot. Tsipras had changed the procedure for the election of leadership while he was president. Previously, the head was elected from the party’s central committee.

Until the end of August, candidate leaders were Euclid Tsakalotos, Efi Achtsioglou, Nikos Pappas (all former ministers in the SYRIZA government), and Stefanos Tzoumakas, who joined SYRIZA in 2019, descending from PASOK.

Kasselakis’s previous involvement in Greek politics was participating in the State Ballot of SYRIZA in the 2023 elections in an honourary (read: non-electable) spot representing expats. He was Tsipras’s choice.

Kasselakis left Greece when he was 14. In the US, he attended (Öffnet in neuem Fenster)the University of Pennsylvania’s Huntsman Program on an Andreas Dracopoulos scholarship. He received two degrees: a Bachelor of Science in Finance from the Wharton School of Business and a Bachelor of Arts in International Studies from the College of Arts & Sciences. Alongside his studies, Kasselakis volunteered on the staff of Senator Joe Biden for the 2008 presidential election. He also claims that he worked at Washington's foreign policy think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies. The CSIS, though, didn’t confirm when asked by some Greeks.

For several years, he was a contributor (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) for The National Herald, initially writing for the student column and finance later on. In 2009, he was hired by Goldman Sachs in London and later in New York as a junior analyst but was fired in 2015.

He had written in an article in July 2023 (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) that he “had developed an excellent rapport with Kyriakos Mitsotakis while he was an MP, then a cabinet minister, and finally the head of the New Democracy party” and that he has “a lot of respect for him personally.”

Kasselakis envisages making SYRIZA the “Greek Democrats,” he has spoken of the “Greek Dream” in his videos and tweets. During the 20 days from the announcement of his candidacy till the ballot, he ran a professional, very well-structured campaign on social media. His positions are of no political coherence. He has referred to a “patriotic Left”; he made a video from an exile island where the post-war Greek government, which included former Nazi collaborators, were sending communists, and he appeared in another video compiling his political agenda with proposals people texted him with. He was one of the first politicians to visit the flooded areas. He also said in an interview his priority would be to provide better for the families of army officials. He supports the view Greece should separate the Church and the State.

In all these videos, it is apparent to a careful observer that Kasselakis talks like he has learned a script by heart. It was also evident in an interview (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) on live TV that he is lagging far behind in knowledge of important topics.

Can he be trained? Yes, he can. What’s the point of choosing a leader who needs (a lot) of training to live up to his primary duties? We don’t know.

Intra-party war

Kasselakis has fallen like a meteorite in the Greek political scene.

After the first ballot result, war erupted inside SYRIZA, with former comrades now divided into two camps firing aggressiveness and insults against each other. If only they had invested half of this energy to fight ND during their previous term. They give the impression of a party about to dissolve. There is no way even to begin to describe the intensity of all this. One thing is for sure: It will be pretty impossible for these people to co-exist in the same party the next day.

No one has comprehended how such a newcomer came first in the leadership race with just dozens of tweets and TikTok videos within 20 days.

Well, it’s at least naive to believe that it was only the social media that gave such a push to Kasselakis. He has apparently been promoted ‘under the radar’ by certain circles inside SYRIZA. It can also safely be assumed that some aspects of his CV, like his work in one of the most conservative US think tanks, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, would make him a likable political figure to the other side of the Atlantic.

Some accounts associated his “out of the blue” candidacy with Tsipras trip to the US (Öffnet in neuem Fenster), where he left around 20 July with his family while the wildfires were burning down parts of the country. There has been no evidence to verify this scenario.

What was the stance of the rest of the candidates in all this?

Euclid Tsakalotos, former Finance Minister in Tsipras’s government, who took 8,77% of the vote, has given his support for the second round to Achtsioglou.

Nikos Pappas, former Communications Minister but most notably known for years as Tsipras's right hand, took 8,7% of the vote. He lent his support to Kasselakis for the second round.

Other people of the so-called “Tsipras camp” have supported Kasselakis, like Giorgos Tsipras and Nikos Karanikas. Tsipras himself has kept complete silence on the matter.

After the result, Stefanos Tzoumakas, who took 1,29% of the vote, was outspoken against Kasselakis. 77-year-old Tzoumakas is very experienced in politics. He had resisted the 1967-1973 Greek junta; the generals arrested and tortured him, and even suffered a left lung rupture. He then served as minister in the first PASOK governments. He left PASOK in the Memoranda years and joined SYRIZA in 2019.

Tzoumakas stated in an interview (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) that SYRIZA never analyzed the causes of their defeat and that the oligarchy system “crept into SYRIZA to control the election of the new leaders.” More specifically, he said:

“The oligarchy supports Kasselakis to break down and dissolve SYRIZA. A few oligarchs promote Kasselakis to this end. Certain circles within SYRIZA want the dissolution and a new party to be formed. This is a phenomenon of great decadence and undermining of politics. There is no suitable person to undertake SYRIZA leadership.”

It is hard to tell what’s valid and what’s not at this point.

What’s for sure is that Kasselakis is photogenic and has succeeded perfectly in attracting the broader public's attention. He turned the race for SYRIZA leadership from a boring event no one would bother following to the first story in the news, even overshadowing the deadly floods. The Greek media are ‘spying’ on his every move, even when he visits the gym.

Even if Kasselakis was promoted into the leadership race by certain circles within SYRIZA (which he did), it’s still inexplicable why so many people expressed their support for him.

People are tired of SYRIZA politicians who have proved unable to bring change.

People have been thirsty for a new face who would seem to be bringing something new to politics.

People in a country in prolonged crisis are desperate to find a ‘savior.’ They would bet their hopes on anyone with some star quality without knowing anything about what he represents.

While we are watching the show, the government further erodes labor rights

While the whole country was watching the Kasselakis-SYRIZA “show,” ND passed another regressive bill for labor rights on Friday evening. The bill provides for 13-hour work through multiple employees (so no pay for over-hours), while it abolishes the 5-day working week and Sunday as a day off for several industries. It also introduces zero-hours contracts (Öffnet in neuem Fenster), in which the employees are on stand-by to be called by the employer to work, even via SMS.

The bill passed only with the governing party votes, receiving fire from all opposition. Labor minister Goergiadis did not even hide his intention “to activate a system to harshly crackdown on strikes,” News247 noted (Öffnet in neuem Fenster).

“When an employee or the majority of employees want to work, and some others are standing outside the business venue prohibiting them from doing it, does this violate the Constitution? Yes, it does… From Monday, this will not happen again. The bill is not voted to be an empty scheme; it will be enforced.”

He tried to defend the bill, claiming that “8-hour work is not abolished” but that it’s all about enforcing an EU Direction stating that working for a second employer is “the employee’s right.” He also claimed that the 6th day of work is for businesses with the 5-day working week. “Those who choose to work for the 6th day will be paid more.”

Labor rights may suffer a blow on the pretext of enforcing the European Direction, the National Commission for Human Rights noted (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) in a press release. They single out provisions regarding fundamental labor rights like working hours, the right to strike, and provisions regarding health, safety, and the weakening of the Labour Inspectorate. The Commission explicitly expresses its increased worry about penalizing strikes and elected unionists. They emphasize that the bill’s restrictions not only prohibit the right to strike but lead to its abolition, thus violating both International and EU law and the Greek Constitution (article 23, par. 2).