Daily clashes inside PASOK: Diamantopoulou’s warning, Doukas–Geroulanos push back

PASOK is mired successful near-daily infighting, with elder figures trading barbs and sending pointed messages to person Nikos Androulakis. At the bosom of the hostility lies the party’s nonaccomplishment to found itself arsenic a beardown alternate governing rod against the ruling New Democracy — a weakness fueling discontent and sharpening rivalries.

Competing Lines, Open Rifts

Former curate Anna Diamantopoulou precocious warned against PASOK drifting into “populism” oregon becoming a enactment successful the mold of Maria Karystianou oregon Zoe Konstantopoulou. Her comments came aft Athens politician Haris Doukas openly rejected immoderate post-election practice with New Democracy, calling alternatively for a party-wide legislature to settee strategy.

Diamantopoulou’s intervention, sparked by the leadership’s enactment for hunger-striking activistic Panos Routsis (father of a unfortunate of the Tempi obstruction disaster), underscored her presumption that PASOK indispensable debar “waving the emblem of populism.”

Pavlos Geroulanos and seasoned MP Haris Kastanidis countered sharply, arguing that showing empathy for victims’ families is not populism. “Fighting populism requires archetypal knowing what populism is,” Kastanidis said successful Parliament, citing theorist Ernesto Laclau.

Androulakis Holds Back

For his part, Androulakis has chosen not to prosecute straight with critics. Aides accidental helium considers the questions already answered, but observers enactment that the enactment enactment is falling backmost connected rhetoric astir “programmatic battles” without clarifying its adjacent steps.

Meanwhile, interior unease grows arsenic polls consistently spot PASOK immoderate 15 points down New Democracy. Talk of Alexis Tsipras’s imaginable instrumentality oregon adjacent a caller center-left conveyance nether Karystianou adds to the uncertainty.

Echoes of the Past, Stakes for the Future

Party veterans callback Costas Laliotis erstwhile joking that “PASOK has 7 lives.” Today, figures similar Doukas and Diamantopoulou framework the conflict arsenic a contention implicit the party’s precise identity: whether to clasp progressive alliances, arsenic Geroulanos advocates, oregon to support governmental “calm” and defy Syriza-style tactics, arsenic Diamantopoulou insists.

“The work we transportation is not to go different Karystianou oregon Konstantopoulou,” Diamantopoulou said successful a caller code successful Kilkis, informing against thoroughfare authorities and rally-driven momentum. Instead, she argued, PASOK indispensable enactment done institutions and uphold stability: “We lived done the fists, the breached glass, the choler with Syriza. We volition not repetition that.”

Yet critics fearfulness that this enactment risks alienating segments of nine that mobilized aft the Tempi catastrophe and stay receptive to anti-establishment appeals. With elections approaching, the situation for Androulakis is stark: to span these divides and halt the party’s gradual descent from the 20% highs of precocious 2024 toward fragmentation and elector drift.