The main left-wing party in Greece, the Progressive Alliance known as Syriza, will continue another week acephalous after none of the five candidates to lead the party got the 50%+1 votes needed to lead the formation. Some 170,000 members will have the opportunity to go to the polls again next Sunday, September 24, to choose between Stefanos Kassekalis, who led Sunday's vote with 45.4%, and Efi Akhtsioglu, who got 36.2%. Turnout has been higher than expected, with nearly 140,000 members going to the polls. Polls suggested that the leadership would surely be decided in a second round, but all polls pointed to a clear lead for Akhtsioglu. However, the first vote reveals a clear advantage for Kasselakis, which takes more than nine points from his opponent.
The first round of voting was delayed by a week due to Storm Daniel, a major storm that caused flooding in many towns in the center of the country and caused 15 deaths and hundreds of displaced people. The change of date to elect a new leader and now the second round of voting adds difficulties to the party in the face of the local elections on October 8, since the new representative of the party will be known two weeks before the elections.
The formation has been without a leader since June 29, after the charismatic Alexis Tsipras resigned from his position after being defeated by the conservative New Democracy party (EPP) in the second round of the Greek elections, obtaining only 48 of the 300 seats in Parliament. The election of a new leader is not only important to overcome the setback of last June, it is also expected that the new leadership will redirect the ideological line of the party. Syriza has long been deeply divided internally between those who suggest a more leftward shift and those who advocate a more modest approach of openness to the centre-left.
Stefanos Kasselakis starts with the advantage of having led the first round of voting. Kasselakis ran in late August, but has quickly built up a base of support with online videos and populist gestures that have particularly captivated younger members. Nicknamed "the golden boy," Kasselakis, 35, has spent much of his youth in the United States, where he worked for Goldman Sachs. The U.S. bank is known in Athens for helping manipulate its public accounts in the early 2000s, which caused the country's economic downturn. His rivals accuse him of rubbing shoulders with the capitalist world, but Kasselakis defends himself by saying that thanks to his work experience he has "understood the arrogance" of economic circles. Openly gay, in his program he advocates the separation of church and state and the end of military service, among other proposals.
His opponent, Efi Akhtsioglu, 38, is a former labor minister (2016-2019), a profile close to Tsipras. Today is a great day, it is a day of democratic participation, a day of strengthening the progressive faction, a day of renewal of the modern left," Akhtsioglu told the cameras when he went to exercise his vote. A law graduate with experience in labour law and the European Parliament, Akhtsioglu has the support of the most progressive sectors of the party.
Still, Tsipras is expected to continue to exert great influence in the party. The former prime minister took over Syriza's presidency in 2008 and led the party to a major electoral triumph in 2015, at the height of the economic crisis. After prevailing in the face of the Troika's austerity measures, Tsipras was forced to impose capital controls. He led the country to a referendum to vote for a bailout and after the population rejected him, he signed a harsh program of economic austerity. He won the snap election again in 2015, but then lost in the next one to Mitsotakis.
- Greece Elections