ND and PASOK at a crossroads

The fact that SYRIZA managed to bring an end to its adventures with Stefanos Kasselakis – albeit it in a not very democratic way, admittedly – and to democratically elect a decent, if not brilliant, new leader in Sokratis Famellos is good news for Greece’s earthquake-prone political system.

Famellos is no Alexis Tsipras in terms of talent, but he is a good man to hold down the fort – at least until Angela Merkel’s choice gets back in the game, as he has often insinuated he plans to do. Famellos can reorganize the party and find common ground with the renegades who split from SYRIZA and formed the New Left. Cooperation between the two may give them enough votes to keep the leftists in Parliament, but any ambitions they may have for the top spot should be forgotten.

It is more than obvious that the reasons why SYRIZA was able to shoot up from single digits to govern the country – the austerity measures and Greece’s near-bankruptcy – are well behind us. The tsunami of anger from 2012 onward that Tsipras rode right into the prime minister’s seat has died away. Greece has returned to normalcy and economic stability.

That said, anti-systemic sentiment and a penchant for conspiracy theories remain strong. That’s what the small parties on SYRIZA’s fringes – Course for Freedom, MeRA25 and Movement for Democracy – are banking on. As are a smorgasbord of small parties and formations on the far-right – like Greek Solution, Voice of Reason, Niki, Spartiates etc – who dream of glory and grandeur now that Donald Trump won the elections in the United States.

In essence, though, the Greek political stage seems to be reverting back to a strong bipartisan split. Not to the days when the two biggest parties accounted for 80% of the popular vote, but to the days of a dominant centrist party, Kyriakos Mitsotakis’ New Democracy, and a main opposition trying to win back the votes it lost, Nikos Androulakis’ PASOK.

After many years of painful sacrifices and major upheaval, Greece is finally sailing in calm waters again. It is surrounded by storms, but it has accomplished much that cannot be taken for granted. It is, therefore, time for the country’s two most important parties – which are largely responsible for Greece’s remarkable progress in the post-World War II era – to find the path to consensus and by doing so to safeguard the present and ensure the country’s future stability.