The two-day symposium PASOK organized for its 39th anniversary will likely be remembered as a convention of “firsts” for the ailing party. While the usual self-confirming speeches were still there, so was the feeling that something different was happening.
Indicative of the changes taking place in PASOK were the speeches of Nikos Christodoulakis and Petros Efthimiou, with the former demanding an end to the self-pity and the later proudly proclaiming to be PASOK, yielding a warm applause from the audience.
There is no clear new PASOK identity and so Mr. Venizelos extended an invitation to all the “progressive, democratic and reformative forces” to “walk together without hegemonic attitudes”. This atmosphere helped alleviate the “civil war” climate amongst party members loyal to Venizelos and Papandreou.
Mr. Venizelos focused his criticism on SYRIZA, blaming the opposition leaders of basing their existence on libel, subversion and canceling everything PASOK achieved. He was also critical about the unilateral termination of the bailout deals, as it would jeopardize the country’s European perspectives.
In line with not being overly critical of DIMAR’s role in the government, Mr. Venizelos avoided outright criticizing Prime Minister Samaras. Instead he adopted Mr. Samaras tactic of approaching the bail out programs separately, arguing that “without the first program, we could not claim the second one”.
Optimism came in small doses; in his closing speech former PM Kostas Simitis noted that “PASOK will carry on its steady path of decline, if it remains blind to the needs of our time, if it considers politics to be standardized behavior, a routine, so long as it is satisfied with petty political loses” and added that “the world has categorized us in the grey mass of […] those who not contribute”.
Mr. Simitis noted that it could benefit from DIMAR’s departure from the government coalition, which proved that Mr. Kouvelis’ party was unable to take a lead in reforming the progressive political scene, due to its “leftist conformism”. The future of the party, according to the former PM, is in recapturing the urgency of the party’s origins in 1974.
Former Prime Minister and party leader Giorgos Papandreou’s speech did not differ much in tone, maintaining that his policies and decisions were proven to be correct. Mr. Papandreou then explained that PASOK should not be dependent on any other political party, while defending his proposal of a referendum regarding future of Greece in Europe.
