PASOK’s revival? Record voter turnout hints at Greek Centre-Left resurgence
Source: NEOS KOSMOS
After the polls in the last few months, the participation of 301,355 people, as opposed to only 270,000 in 2021, in the leadership battle of the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) in Greece, may bode a pendulum swing of the Greek centre-left towards PASOK. The fragmentation of Syriza, a party that elects its own new leader on 24 November and 1 December (if need be), is also a reason. It is too early to say how far the pendulum is swinging towards the former governing party of Greece.
PASOK still lags by around 10 per cent behind the current conservative and troubled government of PM Kyriakos Mitsotakis in the polls. It is substantially behind, by around 20 per cent, from its traditional baseline of 35 per cent of the vote in Greece, which the party garnered 15 years ago.
All the signs indicate that the Greeks are starting to listen again to what the once dominant governing party of the centre-left has to say about today’s cost of living crisis impacting on Greeks. In the January 2015 elections, PASOK was on the verge of parliamentary extinction, winning only 4.7 per cent of the vote, as opposed to 36.3 per cent of Alexis Tsipras’ left-wing Syriza. Multiple crises in the early 2010s saw the vast majority of PASOK voters move to Syriza.
It is too early to hail the rebirth of PASOK based on yesterday’s result, but it is a good sign of a possible PASOK comeback. We all need to wait for the new party leader to be elected in the second round next Sunday, October 13.
It will either be one of the current leading vote-getters, Nikos Androulakis, or Athens Mayor Haris Doukas, who defeated Pavlos Yeroulanos by 800 votes for the second place. Androulakis’ challengers garnered almost 70 per cent of the vote in the first round; on the other hand, the Mayor of Athens came fourth, behind Pavlos Yeroulanos, a former PASOK minister, and EU Commissioner Anna Diamantopoulou and the current leader in both major urban centres of Greece, Athens and Thessaloniki, where most of the voters live.
At this stage, Pavlos Yeroulanos—a candidate who appealed to both the left and right of PASOK due to his progressive and detailed plan, and who garnered support from grassroots citizens rather than the party’s political strongholds—was defeated by just a few hundred votes.
It is also important to emphasise that the direct election of party leaders in Greece, introduced 20 years ago by former PASOK leader and Prime Minister George A. Papandreou, continues to legitimise politics. The significant participation of hundreds of thousands of Greek citizens in this process underscores its importance in an era when political engagement is more crucial than ever, particularly for vulnerable sectors of Greek society. For these groups, politics and active participation remain the primary avenues to protect their rights and advocate for their legitimate interests.
Kostas Karamarkos, a long-term journalist, was also a senior adviser to the PASOK government in the late 1990s to the early 2000s.
The original article: belongs to NEOS KOSMOS .
