Antonio Gramsci wrote in The Prison Notebooks that elections are the moment in which the tendencies that have formed in previous years are concentrated. Last Sunday’s vote was indeed an impressive political moment. However, the trends have been around for a long time, for anyone who wanted to see them.

big question mark again SYRIZA. A side that raised difficult questions both in its launch phase (the reasons for which its opponents did not understand at the time) and in the current phase of its invasion (the reasons for which it did not understand). Because this is the whole point: SYRIZA has failed from within, no matter how much it blames the “arbiter” for its troubles.

Many have the question on their lips whether SYRIZA exists without Tsipras. But it belongs to an earlier phase. SYRIZA lost with him Tsipras. “Tsipras” is a metonym for multifactorial lesion.

Of course, the face of the presenter is a key parameter. This has been SYRIZA’s strength for a long time, but at the same time its limit. A consequence of the fascination he displayed during his rise to a wider audience, but also of the revulsion he aroused in an even wider audience as a flamboyant and controversial political figure. For “his own” he became a powerful leader around whom a shallow party system was organized, often in terms of personal admiration and self-censorship in criticism; for “strangers” – the personification of absolute political evil; for “ours” – outside”, a big failure of the anti-memorandum promise. And if the party has remained based on the charisma of the leader, we know that the charismatic leader has to constantly renew his charisma, otherwise he will lose this quality.

This happened. The leader and the party organization were unable to renew charisma and promise from one point to another, to find a new place in the changing political and social field. Thus, an element of their success was that they managed to constantly transform their political and ideological profile, combining disparate elements in coordination with warm social material: Euroscepticism coexisted with Europeanism, demagoguery with manageability, virginity with Satan. He lost this ability from the phase of control, as if the contact with power did not act in a formative way, but as a blow.

Since losing in 2019, SYRIZA has spent time and opportunity reinventing itself. The choice to deepen a radical profile, albeit under anti-heroic conditions, was just as “legitimate” as becoming a major player with a social democratic bent, for whom the arms of the European socialists were, after all, wide open. He decided not to choose. And, above all, something unthinkable for the party in power, it did not take care to acquire a presence in professional associations, in local governments, in unions, in universities – social rhizomes, but also feedback channels that allow you to understand deeper processes in the social body in motion.

Many have the question on their lips whether SYRIZA exists without Tsipras. But it belongs to an earlier phase. SYRIZA lost to Tsipras.

Because in the meantime we have changed the era. The cycle of the Greek crisis has closed, numerous cycles of crises have opened. Greek society left behind the great political dramas of the 2010s in search of stability and grounding – not necessarily a conservative choice, but a rational one, perhaps a transitional one.

In this context, SYRIZA had the opportunity to highlight its own contribution to ushering in a smoother era: closing the memo period, prudent economic policies that even reduced inequality, addressing a chronic national problem (the Prespa agreement), valuable progressive reforms such as the same-sex cohabitation agreement steam. He also had the opportunity to highlight the updated political composition, not “cinematic”, as in 2012-2015, but a whole “generation” of people who have gone from leftist theory to grassroots government, an extremely educational experience.

He didn’t. How he did not extend his program peaks. Somehow, he even lost his privileged young audience, which is not given, but demanding. They need a compelling answer about how to make schools and universities better, jobs, the ability to plan for the future in a country that offers mostly frustration. Since politics is generally demanding, the convenience and amateurism of the leadership and the party is not enough – part of which was the constant underestimation of an extremely capable and professionally trained opponent.

Perhaps SYRIZA’s deepest problem is that it has functioned like a phobic party, with no concern for “faction”. Selectively replaced it PASOK – not completely and not once and for all – forgetting that there is a broader faction, it is usually the majority in the post-colonial, center-left in its multiple manifestations. This faction has been hit hard by foreign and micro-hegemonic descriptions of various options for government cooperation, without any attempt at osmosis and equal dialogue.

Whatever the outcome of the June elections, this faction runs the risk of being split between mid- or close-range players, with no visible prospect of hegemonic representation and a competitive symbiotic relationship between SYRIZA and PASOK. However, the demand for a large left-center player in every sense remains. The question is who will be able to express it in the coming years.

Mr. Yannis Balapanidis is a political scientist and writer.