Melbourne: Clear sky, 3 °C

Sydney: Scattered clouds, 9 °C

Athens: Clear sky, 29 °C

Alavanos and Tsipras brawl over SYRIZA

Node Tools
(0)

Rate This

0
No votes yet
Your rating: None
29 Jun 2009

Leadership tensions continued in the Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA) with the parliamentary leader withdrawing his resignation and the Coalition President apologising to the broad Left in Greece for the ‘inexcusable catastrophic manner’ the Coalition addressed its poor showing in the recent European elections.

In a meeting of the Synaspismos Left Coalition, the main group within SYRIZA, last Monday, parliamentary leader Alekos Alavanos announced he would not be stepping down, despite insisting last week that he had decided to leave after SYRIZA garnered less than 5 percent in the European Parliament elections on June 7.

“Most of the blame for everything that happened between [the general election of] September 2007 and June 2009 and which led to SYRIZA’s defeat in the Euro elections belongs to the head of the parliamentary group,” he said. “I fully accept that blame.”

Alavanos also suggested that Synaspismos, and therefore Tsipras, had too much power within the SYRIZA coalition.

Tsipras responded on Thursday by apologising to the Coalition’s supporters and sympathisers for the manner in which SYRIZA had dealt with the election results.

“Personally I feel the need, after two weeks of dealing with the elections results - which were neither the best or the worst possible result - in a inexcusable and catastrophic manner, to apologise on behalf of the leadership of SYRIZA to the broader of the Left and members and supporters of SYRIZA, for the manner in which we have embittered them with our response.”

Tsipras also took a swipe at Alavanos by saying that the organisational wing of the coalition was staying calm and proceeding with logic and caution, unlike the parliamentary wing of the Coalition.

The leadership tensions are expected to continue until the party conference in September.

Read more from
  • share

Comments

Post new comment

Enter your Neos Kosmos username.
Enter the password that accompanies your username.

Copyright © 2009-2012 Ethnic Publications Pty Ltd | Website development by ANSO