Syriza, the once radical leftwing force that set Europe alight with its anti-austerity rhetoric at the height of Greece’s debt crisis, is on the verge of being replaced as the country’s main opposition party after the removal of its leader Stefanos Kasselakis and his decision to start a new political movement.
At least five Syriza deputies are expected to officially inform parliament on Monday of their decision to leave the party, a move that will result in the group’s parliamentary presence being reduced to 30 lawmakers – one fewer than the centre-left Pasok.
“Syriza is about to lose its status as the main opposition,” said Stelios Kouloglou, a prominent former Syriza MEP. “Stefanos Kasselakis, the man who many saw as the messiah, will be remembered as the gravedigger who ultimately buried the [party’s] corpse that died under his watch.”
In office between 2015 and 2019, the leftwing Syriza controlled 35 seats as the main opposition bloc in the 300-seat house.
Its implosion means Pasok, whose standing went into freefall as the force most associated with causing the nation’s nearly decade-long economic crisis, will move into second place under its newly re-elected leader, Nikos Androulakis. As the main opposition, it will face the centre-right government of the prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis.
The development follows the ousting of Kasselakis from Syriza’s leadership post and his decision on Saturday to not only formally break with the party but create “a movement of democracy, free citizens and progress”.
The country’s first openly gay party leader, Kasselakis, who moved to the US as a teenager and had never worked in Greece before, had emerged seemingly out of nowhere to assume the position after Syriza’s defeat in double elections last year, succeeding the previous leader and former prime minister Alexis Tsipras.
Kasselakis was controversially barred at the start of a rowdy party congress on Friday from again contesting the leadership, a decision denounced by his supporters as undemocratic. The race is due to take place on 24 November, with a possible second round on 1 December.
By Sunday there was mounting confidence among the Greek-American’s followers – known as Kasselistas – that as many as eight other MPs would withdraw from Syriza’s parliamentary group. Four announced they were abandoning the party on Friday.
The former leader requires 10 parliamentary seats to establish a new political force. At the weekend, Syriza implored deputies not to break ranks, calling those who had already done so “apostates who would be judged by history”.
“I appeal to those who have become independents to think again and those who are thinking about it, not to do it,” said Pavlos Polakis, previously a staunch supporter of Kasselakis and now among the four candidates lined up to contest the leadership race.
“[The man] who is proposing that they do so may not even be in Greece next month,” he warned, suggesting that Kasselakis could even leave the country.
Leftwing diehards had long voiced disquiet at the political neophyte’s lack of ideological affiliation, with many asking how someone with no known links to Syriza could be elected to its helm.
Kasselakis’s lavish lifestyle and erstwhile status as a shipowner and Goldman Sachs financier particularly irked the party’s old-school cohort. The 36-year-old had publicly boasted he had “no need to ever work again” before holding a three-day celebration on Crete in August to mark his wedding to his US partner, Tyler McBeth.
Shortly after Kasselakis’s election, 11 Syriza MPs, many decrying the outsider’s “Trumpian practices [and] right-leaning populism”, broke away and set up a splinter group, the New Left.
In recent months as infighting has worsened, Syriza’s poll ratings were not only overtaken by Pasok but fell to single digits amid accusations about the “political tourist’s” popularity being based on little more than a social media presence and dress code that focused on showing off his body.
On Monday Syriza said it would request that the former leader’s wealth declaration – a source of widespread contention – justifying his assets, income and alleged participation in offshore companies be officially investigated.
“In these hours, Stefanos Kasselakis, with the undivided support of other centres is waging an all-out battle for Syriza’s parliamentary group to lose its position as official opposition,” the party wrote on Sunday in a post on X. “As for the unrelenting and unanswered questions about his wealth declaration and offshore [companies], it is clear they should be checked by the competent authorities.”
Kasselakis said it was up to supporters to decide what his new progressive movement would be called.
With Syriza’s internal strife showing no signs of abating, soul-searching on the left appears to be the order of the day. In an op-ed piece published on Sunday by the online portal News 24/7, the veteran leftwing writer Giorgos Karelias described Kasselakis’s appearance as a “global first”.
“A guy unrelated to Greek reality and completely alien to the left became the leader of the largest leftwing party in modern Greek history. No one in the party had the curiosity before they crowned him chief to ask about his work or days … they all welcomed him and asked him to save them.”
He said this had produced a “tragic-comic situation” that had ended with the party barring his candidacy in the upcoming leadership race.
