Pretense honed to a fine art
Just as we were saying that Alexis Tsipras has disappeared and as his comrades criticized his silence throughout the storm in SYRIZA caused by the election of Stefanos Kasselakis, the leftist opposition party’s former president turned up again. He was first spotted at a dinner with former party spokesman and close ally Gavriil Sakellaridis and then in a series of contacts, including with Kasselakis, where he was, supposedly, trying to secure the party’s unity.
The word “supposedly” has special significance when it comes to nearly everything Alexis Tsipras does or says. He supposedly wanted to stop Greece from having to answer to its creditors and adhere to their stringent terms; he supposedly wanted the “No” camp to win in the 2015 referendum about the third bailout deal; and now he is supposedly working hard to keep SYRIZA from falling apart.
But the tremors in the party’s very foundations have been getting stronger for some time, basically since Kasselakis was elected party president and speculation about the party’s split or complete collapse has been rampant ever since.
The rumor mill also spun wildly with suggestions that Kasselakis had actually been put into the race by Tsipras himself
After winning the leadership race in September, Kasselakis stated that his was a victory for the “forces of light.” Was he suggesting that everyone who was not on his side symbolized, and still symbolizes, the forces of darkness? Is this what his rival, Euclid Tsakalotos, was suggesting when he commented on the statement and asked why Tsipras had nothing to say on the subject? He was right to ask, but received no answer to his query.
The rumor mill also spun wildly with suggestions that Kasselakis had actually been put into the race by Tsipras himself, even if party firebrand Pavlos Polakis put himself forward as the force who drove the American-raised outsider into Greek politics more generally and into SYRIZA more specifically. These rumors were strengthened when Nikos Pappas, Tsipras’ right-hand man, expressed his unequivocal support for Kasselakis. Yet, through it all, the party’s former leader – and for many, SYRIZA’s “natural leader” – kept mum.
As the weeks after the election passed, we started to see officials leaving the party in anger and old cadres being summarily ousted, leading up to last weekend’s stormy meeting of the central committee – throughout, SYRIZA’s “natural leader” maintained his silence.
Now that developments have accelerated, he (supposedly) decided to step in and mend broken fences and advise the new leader to uphold the party’s badly brutalized charter.
Why did Tsipras choose to step in now? Why did he wait so long to say something so obvious? Perhaps because this intervention, too, is part of his realm of pretense: He is supposedly trying to save the party’s unity by choosing to act when it is already too late to change the course of events so as to appear to have done his part.
The party can sink, so long as its “natural leader” survives.
