“Retired, dark-skinned, blond… What message does he want to convey? He’s trying to talk to the image.” The almost aphoristic statement comes from the head of the “old guard” SYRIZA and concerns the new Electoral Committee of the party, which will bear the burden of the election campaign in the second round.

“Who are the new faces? People who have nothing to do with space, how will they develop a solid political discourse? Or old people, what kind of freshness and what image of renewal do they serve?

Throughout it

It is clear that the personnel choice of the main pre-election party body, as a reaction to the shock of the election results on May 21, caused a new shock, this time internal. It can be said that it was precisely this narrow party profile that Alexis Tsipras sought to change, apparently believing that the party’s image and outward visibility were among the factors that led to a painful defeat. But is it? The “cutoffs” of the party, leaders who suddenly, for no reason, ended up in the Electoral Commission and excluded from the media, in the context of an attempt to centrally control the message in order to avoid their own goals of the previous pre-election period, do not seem to agree. A temporary truce has been announced before the June 25 elections, but in private conversations there is talk of Alexis Tsipras’ “completely personal policy” regarding the central choice with which the party proceeded in the first electoral contest, both in relation to persons and with strategic moves “that we have learned from the TV, as they usually say.

The options for the second pre-election period are clearly the personal intervention of the President of SYRIZA, who seems to be using them to stake on his personal political survival the day after the election.

The “map” of the new electoral commission, apart from the creeping inner-party murmurs, caused wider surprise. Mainly because it involves many new faces, many with dubious political experience. Alexis Tsipras has shown that with his choice he gives more space to people within the party who are believed to have his absolute trust and will not question his moves towards elections. Like secretary Rania Svigu, a recent addition to the anthropogeography of Komunduru, Popi Tsapanidu and Katerina Notopoulu. The second subgroup can be considered as consisting of young managers who are considered to have left a positive mark already during the reign of the country of SYRIZA. Like Efi Ahtsioglu, Alexis Haritsis, Giorgos Chouliarakis, Kostas Zachariadis.

In addition, it is difficult to find commonalities. Nicolas Farandouris represents a think tank of scientifically trained executives who has confronted the issue of the energy crisis and is considered to be well advanced in terms of communication. Of course, at the level of the pre-election campaign, the expectations that were cultivated in connection with his candidacy for the monomandate of Kefalonia, where he comes from, were not confirmed. Closer to the radical wing of the party is the labor activist Dionysis Tebeneras, who has already begun to come to the forefront of the electoral struggle.

One of the criteria for staffing the new body was the participation of persons who had achieved good results in the elections, who had no previous party service.

“Crusaders”

Undoubtedly, one of the criteria in the staff of the Electoral Commission was the inclusion in the election commission of persons who had proven themselves in the elections, scored crosses and gained impressions, without political experience, without previous party service, leaving behind candidates with these characteristics. And if for Athena Linou the visibility of the days of the pandemic certainly mattered, then Rania Traskia became a big surprise. Her candidacy in Thessaloniki was the personal choice of Alexis Tsipras and surprised many. He was much more surprised by the decision to join the election commission. It was a choice in the logic of young people.

Evangelos Apostolakis is a choice that apparently also targets the idea of ​​pluralism and supposed expansion that the main opposition party wants to send out on its way to a re-election. As an apostate, he appeals to a more conservative audience and acts as a guarantor that the party leaves behind the “childhood diseases” of conflicting positions on national and central geostrategic issues.

In a new generation where SYRIZA has been painfully established to have lost or never had the appeal it thought it would, the goal is to join Diana Vutiraku’s campaign headquarters with rolls of excellence in robotics. And Macrina-Viola Kosti is said to communicate better with a younger audience, focusing on highlighting the potential of local communities and cinematic action to meet social needs.

The importance the party attaches to immigrant communities is indicated by Kenyan Nikodimos Main Kinua’s participation in the Electoral Commission, and the inclusion of a civil engineer in the electoral strike group indicates the priority given to the needs of people with disabilities. Janice Livadaru.

Transcript

And if the composition of the election commission raised questions, then the inclusion of a university student Nikos Marantsidis in the election headquarters caused a big reaction, which manifested itself mainly in social networks. The reason is not only in his earlier articles and writings, which are seen by many on the left as anti-communist revisionism, but also in his recent articles in which he criticized the central choice of SYRIZA that led to the May 21 defeat, emphasizing the need for a new leadership.