There were four candidates who competed this Sunday in the Syriza primaries: MEP Nikolas Farantouris; soap opera actor and former mayor of Stylida, Apostolos Gletsos; and deputies Pavlos Polakis and Sokratis Famellos. All of them went to the polls with the promise on the table to rebuild the party and get it afloat after one of the most turbulent and chaotic years in its history.
With satisfactory participation data for the party – 70,152 people voted in these elections -, after 11 at night (local time in Greece) the final results arrived: Sokratis Famellos (Athens, 1966) won with a very tight margin (49, 41% of the votes) to the Cretan Pavlos Polakis, who fell just short (43.51%).
Deputy for Syriza since 2015 and deputy minister of Environment and Energy between 2016 and 2019, Famellos based his campaign on the idea of “rebooting” Syriza “to make it stronger and bigger.” For his part, Pavlos Polakis congratulated Famellos and also insisted on the need to be united “to overthrow the Mitsotakis State.” [primer ministro]”.
Outside Koumoundourou, the party headquarters, the new president of the party predicted a cohesive future: “It is a good day for Syriza and for the left.” He also congratulated the rest of the candidates and the different electoral committees and pointed out his new responsibility. “We are not celebrating, but we are happy and we are aware of the work we have. This is a response to those who questioned the future of Syriza […] We will rebuild our house again.” Famellos emphasized the idea of “getting back together,” something that the training has not been characterized by in the last year.
Sokratis Famellos, the favorite
From eight in the morning until eight at night (in principle the polls were going to close at seven, but in the middle of the afternoon the party decided to extend it one more hour) the Syriza bases moved to the different polling stations. enabled to cast their vote.
At the 17th-155th Athens Elementary School, in the Ambelokipi neighborhood, during the afternoon, the trickle of people was constant. Yanis, 46, claimed to have voted for Famellos “because he is the only one who can rebuild the party” and described Kasselakis’ year as “a disaster.”
Thanos, 34 years old and also a Famellos voter, had the same opinion, “the most decent and who has done a good job of representation in Parliament. I have also voted for him because I believe he can unite the party. “I no longer vote for Syriza, but I wanted to vote for what I think is the best solution for Syriza, because it is a very important part of the left.”
Regarding Polakis, another of the favorites, he said that “he has too much temperament”, and about Farantouris and Gletsos he assured that “they are not strong enough”. Nikos (60) and Stella (57) had also opted for Sokratis Famellos, because he was the candidate who generated “the most confidence” in them. Dimitra Kavatha, 63, admitted having voted for Kasselakis a year ago and regretting it: “It has been shown that she did not have clear ideas,” she adds. She had also cast her vote for Famellos.
For days, the name of Sokratis Famellos, current president of the parliamentary group after the departure of Tsipras, had been strongly suggested as a possible winner of the elections. Linked to the leftist party since its inception, he is currently in charge of Energy and Environment issues in his parliamentary group. He is also a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, where he participates in issues related to sustainable development, climate change, migratory movements and other social issues.
A year of chaos after the electoral debacle
To understand why Syriza arrived at these primaries yesterday in one of the most vulnerable situations in recent years, we must look at the two calls for general elections in 2023, when the left-wing party, still with Alexis Tsipras at the helm, lost more of half of its deputies. The reactions were immediate and a few days later, Tsipras resigned and left all his positions in the party.
A few weeks after the resignation of the historic leader of the Greek left, at the end of September 2023, primary elections were called to elect a new president. After a fierce campaign between what had been Alexis Tsipras’s right-hand man and former labor minister between 2016 and 2019, Efi Ahtsioglou, and the newcomer Stefanos Kasselakis, against all odds, the latter won. Kasselakis was not a typical candidate: he had moved to the United States with his family when he was 13 years old and had only moved back to Greece a few months ago. His work as an advisor at Goldman Sachs, his wealthy position and his status as outsider They generated certain misgivings and disaffection; but the base supported him. The reason was obvious: many of those who voted for him considered that a figure from outside the party would bring fresh ideas and new air to the party; the change that was needed at that time after the electoral disaster in the general elections.
“At first, I was not against Kasselakis. Obviously I realized that it was not 100% part of the Syriza context, but I thought it would bring something new or different. I could see some red flagbut I decided not to pay attention to them,” explains Dimitris (not his fictitious name at the request of the source). Yesterday he voted for Nikolas Farantouris, but “if Famellos wins, it will also be fine,” he said Sunday afternoon at the Ambelokipi polling station. “I voted for Farandouris knowing that he probably won’t come out,” he said.
Stefanos Kasselakis, in the Greek media, was nicknamed the messiah and he, echoing the nickname, promised to unite the party and revive it. Nothing could be further from reality: a few weeks after the primaries, eleven heavyweights of the party, led by Efi Ahtsioglou, left the formation (and the parliamentary group) and created a new party: New Left.
Kasselakis’ reign was short-lived: one year. Last September, after a few months of ups and downs and too many controversies, a faction, “the group of the 87” – supporters of the former prime minister and former party leader, Alexis Tsipras – caused his departure. The dismissal of Kasselakis opened the umpteenth crisis in the formation, which was once again beheaded and much more weakened than a year ago.
For his part, Stefanos Kasselakis has taken advantage of this election weekend in Syriza to present his own party: Movement for Democracy, described by himself as “the most modern and participatory political party that Greece has ever seen.” The name was chosen by Kasselakis’ supporters after three days of voting.
In Syriza, now, the great challenge for Sokratis Famellos will be to recover the identity of a party that, after the various disbandments, is no longer the main opposition party. Famellos will have to revive a directionless Syriza, with too many families and leaderships, and he will have to work to sew its seams if he wants to recover that brilliance of 2015, when the party won almost by an absolute majority in the general elections, standing up to the troika and becoming the lighthouse of the European left.
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