Arrogance is a usual phenomenon in Greek politics. For decades the Left in Greece has lived isolated, in the margins of political happenings. It faced the ostentatious contempt of the traditional Right and the political diffidence of the Centrist forces.
What Left? After the civil war and up to our days the Left was mostly the Greek Communist Party (KKE). Some of its “offshoots” along with a social group that spoke as the voice of democratic socialism made up the political formation that was called Center Left.
Leading representatives of the spiritual life often joined the ranks of the Center Left, an aristocracy of the spirit that never managed to form a political force capable of claiming power. On the one hand the KKE proposed alliances with an obvious tendency towards hegemony in the Left. On the other hand, the Centrist parties usually saw their left-wing voters as water carriers…
The two major political parties that dominated the country’s political life in the post-war period, the Centrist Union and PASOK, never discussed aligning against the “damned Right” – even at a time when conservative forces clearly limited democracy in the country. The struggle, according to Georgios Papandreou’s slogans had “two fronts”, while his successor Andreas Papandreou never sought out to cooperate with other parties of the Left, which seemed to be crushed between the inflexible KKE and often arrogant PASOK.
The alternation between PASOK and New Democracy in power with their sins, in conjunction with the collapse of real socialism, suddenly allowed a new party to emerge, which was formed by small parties and political formations from the greater left. The Coalition of the Radical left, which started off from the usual percentage of the vote that such political formations attracted, manage to come first!
The story carries on today. Within three electoral showdowns SYRIA managed to seize power. Despite being comprised of many parties, it has demonstrated a remarkable cohesion and unexpected unity.
As sudden as the unity was, so “unexpected” was the crisis. The majority backs Mr. Tsipras, who will obviously called to choose whether to lead the Center Left that seems to to be offered to him…
Stavros P. Psycharis
Originally published in the Sunday print edition
