The Greek center-left has spent years fragmenting. The launch of Alexis Tsipras’s Greek Left Alliance last week is now accelerating that process, with two parties collapsing and a third caught in a damaging internal argument over whether to engage with Tsipras at all.
The First to Go
The weekend brought the first casualty. Petros Kokkalis, a former SYRIZA MEP and founder of the small party Kosmos, resigned as its secretary and announced his departure from the project he founded. His co-chair confirmed the news publicly. Kokkalis is expected to join the Greek Left Alliance’s political council.
Nea Aristera Loses Its Parliamentary Footing
The more significant rupture came on Tuesday. Seven MPs and more than 150 party members formally notified Nea Aristera secretary Gavriil Sakellaridis of their resignation, effectively dissolving the party’s parliamentary group with their departure. Nea Aristera, a splinter party formed two years ago by former SYRIZA MPs who broke with the party after Tsipras stepped down, had tried to position itself as an independent and serious voice on the Left.
The departing MPs are Alexis Charitsis, Nasos Iliopoulos, Effie Achtsioglou, Dimitris Tzanakopoulos, Chousein Zeimpek, Meropi Tzoufi and Theano Fotiou. Shortly after the announcement, Achtsioglou surrendered her parliamentary seat.
In their joint letter, the seven described the decision as “difficult but necessary,” saying the project that started two years ago had run its course. In their letter, the seven argued that the leadership of the party had chosen a path of autonomous reconstruction at a moment when, in their view, the left needed to consolidate. The letter closed with a direct line: “The current government must not have a third term, with or without Mitsotakis.”
Nea Aristera’s response was sharp. The party said the split had been “planned for some time” and while not surprising, was painful both politically and personally. It warned that the departures weaken left-wing opposition to the Mitsotakis government. Its statement on the Greek Left Alliance was pointed: “It is a personality-driven, leader-centric formation, without internal processes, which presupposes the dissolution of parties, excludes cooperation and recognizes no allied or overlapping political forces.”
PASOK and the Argument It Did Not Need
The turbulence has not left PASOK untouched. As we reported yesterday, Athens Mayor Haris Doukas raised the possibility of structured dialogue between PASOK and the Greek Left Alliance ahead of a potential second election round. His remarks were widely read inside the party as an opening toward Tsipras.
The reaction was swift. Doukas posted a clarification on social media shortly after, reaffirming the party’s commitment to an independent course. According to reports, the clarification followed direct contact between his office and a senior party figure at PASOK headquarters, which itself signals the level of irritation the mayor’s remarks produced.
Anna Diamantopoulou, the party’s head of political planning, addressed the episode without naming Doukas directly. PASOK’s opponent, she wrote on a social media post, is New Democracy, politically, institutionally and now morally. Its opponent is also “populism, lies and reckless politics.” Diamantopoulou said PASOK was not in the business of seeking coalition partners, least of all from parties that had already closed the door. The party knew its direction: contest the election independently, expand its support, oppose the government on substance and present voters with a credible governing alternative.
The Greek Left Alliance has been equally categorical from the other direction. Its spokesperson Theoni Koufonikolakou has said that PASOK is “not a neighboring political space” and that the party is not interested in post-election cooperation with PASOK or with SYRIZA.
The episode comes at a difficult moment for PASOK. The first opinion polls conducted since the launches of the Greek Left Alliance and Hope for Democracy, the new party of Maria Karystianou, show the party running fourth, behind New Democracy, EL.A.S. and Karystianou’s movement.
