Are the days of Greece's radical-left Syriza party numbered?

There was open animosity, jeers and boos at the Faliro Sports Pavilion Arena near Athens where Greece's main opposition party, Syriza, held its four-day party convention. Fresh political ideas, however, were thin on the ground.

Stefanos Kasselakis was elected leader of Syriza, the Coalition of the Radical Left, only five months ago. In that short space of time, he has succeeded in alienating even those party officials who backed him to become leader last September.

Kasselakis, a 35-year-old former Goldman Sachs trader and the country's first openly gay party leader, appeared seemingly out of nowhere last year and was elected party leader ahead of Effie Achtsioglou, a former labor minister and close ally of former Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras.

He was seen as a complete newcomer, a blank slate onto which many Syriza supporters projected what they wanted to see. His big promise was that he would beat Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis of Greece's powerful ruling New Democracy party.

Talking 'directly to the people'

His political ideas were not clear at the time and still aren't five months down the line. For those on the traditional left, his leadership style is rather unconventional: Kasselakis likes to speak "directly to the people," and has no desire to consult any of the party's committees.

The first split in the party appeared just weeks after the internal party election when 11 Syriza lawmakers, including the defeated Achtsioglou and other former ministers in Tsipras' government, left the party in November and set up a new parliamentary group called "New Left."

This split was very nearly followed by another at the convention this past weekend, when Kasselakis insisted that he be allowed to pursue any policy he saw fit until the parliamentary election in 2027 — even if this meant Syriza suffering a spectacular defeat in the upcoming European elections.

Tsipras intervenes

Just hours before the convention began, former party leader Tsipras called on Kasselakis via Facebook to face a vote of confidence in his leadership to determine whether he still had the backing of the party's rank and file.

Tsipras stressed that the party has been in a prolonged and deep crisis for quite some time, adding that "egotism, narcissism, the abandoning of the principles of collectivity and comradeship" had paralyzed the party.

Kasselakis reacted to Tsipras' intervention like a boxer, telling delegates: "Find me an opponent and let's vote."

Former minister Olga Gerovasili, a close ally of Tsipras, was the only one willing to step into the ring and take him on. She made no bones about her concern for the party: the downward spiral had to be stopped, she said, insisting  it was the job of the party leader to "build bridges not walls."

Her words were greeted with both jeers and cheers, just like at a boxing match.

Ultimately, the convention decided against a vote. And so, after this very public spat between the party leader and his supporters on the one hand and traditional party officials and members on the other, no one emerged victorious. On the contrary, all sides suffered losses — and none more so than the party itself, which finished the turbulent convention with a severely dented image.

Even though Kasselakis has lost the trust of a large part of the party, his opponents within Syriza were unable to put forward a viable political alternative. What's more, Tsipras — the once respected party founder and former leader — has now become a rather controversial figure.

Is the next split imminent?

It's quite possible that the coming days will bring another split, or that a growing number of members will withdraw from politics in disillusionment.

For the time being, Syriza is still the largest opposition party in the Greek parliament, even though its parliamentary group shrunk from 47 to 36 lawmakers (out of total 300) after the schism in November.

All opinion polls show that the party could face another resounding defeat in the European elections in early June.

According to the most recent poll on February 19, if elections were held now, the ruling New Democracy party would get 34.3%, Syriza 12.5%, the semi-resurrected socialist PASOK 14.6% and the Communist Party 9.4%.

The three parties that have so far emerged from Syriza — New Left, Course of Freedom and DiEM25, which was co-founded by former Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis — would together garner 9.4% of the vote. Individually, however, they would struggle to get over the 3% threshold.

Bleak outlook for Syriza

After the party's disastrous convention, even the predicted 12.5% for Syriza seems overly optimistic. Most political observers predict that if the party continues tearing itself apart, its support will drop below 10%. If that happens, it would no longer be a viable choice for government in Greece or a relevant left-wing force in Europe.

This is in stark contrast to where the party was 10 years ago, when it was seen as the great hope for both crisis-ridden Greece and the European political left.

At the height of the 2015 economic crisis, Syriza won the parliamentary election in Greece and ruled the country. The biggest success of the Tsipras-led Syriza government was that it led Greece out of the crisis with a policy that was largely dictated by the country's European creditors. In this respect, it succeeded where the two parties that had previously ruled the country in rotation, New Democracy and PASOK, had failed.

But Syriza had no convincing narrative for the post-crisis era and narrowly lost the 2019 election, garnering just under 32% of the vote. Its performance in opposition did not convince voters and it slumped to just under 18% in last year's general election, leading to Tsipras' resignation as party leader.

If this downward trend continues, there will soon be little left of this once so popular party.

This article was originally written in German.