SYRIZA: Luxury ties for Kasselakis and Spiliotopoulos – 2024-05-11 04:09:31

If there is a “leftist” in SYRIZA, it is analogous to the “rightist” of ND. THE Alexis Tsipras and Kyriakos Mitsotakis they deliberately violated the ideological boundaries of their parties to dominate the political scene. The first collaborator with Burnt Banner and the second by assimilating a part of the modernizing PaSoK.

The new customs are also followed by Stefanos Kasselakis in the logic that in love and in war everything is permitted. Even the “right” transliteration of a so-called god of war, even in his incarnate version Ari Spiliotopoulouin an ostensibly left-wing party.

Problem for the “barons” of the ND

The quarrels about him have followed Spiliotopoulos since 1997, when at the age of 31 he was appointed press representative of the ND. Her young age, which was underlined by a raspy baby face, was the one problem for the older “barons” of the ND. The other was his close relationship with Costas Karamanliswhich started in 1992 from the political planning of the party and in which all the wrongs and reverses of the Karamanlis opposition period were gradually loaded.

Ares – at that time it was enough to mention only his short name – scandalized with his ways the sanctuaries and loyalists of the conservative faction, he “seduced” Karamanlis into mistakes, it was the G. Karatzaferi “Salome” of the SW. The painful defeat of 2000 and the wrong timing of the photo shoot in a women’s magazine with a white towel around the neck and the implication of physical nudity spelled the end for Karamanlis. But not in the “Karamanli” wing, within which he was elected a member of the State Parliament, for a decade member of the second Athens (2004-2014) and twice a minister.

The fez in EOT and the luxurious life

At the Ministry of Tourism he left behind various eccentricities that the hoteliers had to say and a 70,000 euro fez to the EOT for silk ties and handkerchiefs, etiquette gifts according to him. At the Ministry of Education, he left a kitsch decoration in the pharaonic office that was inspired by Marietta Giannakou and reduced to half the area of ​​o Nikos Philis. Due to the irony of History, Philis is outside SYRIZA and Spiliotopoulos is inside.

His successors say the account of his ministerial work boils down to little substance and a lot of air blown in the guise of communication skills. As one of the initiators of the middle space strategy, along with Yannis Loulis, for years he was considered a “wizard of communication”. His communication talents may have benefited Karamanlis, but not him. When he was “exiled” from the narrow leadership core, he chose to live like a star, ruining his prospects in politics. Holidays in Mykonos and Arachova, going out to the most in-house restaurants in Athens, hanging out with the local rich and famous, living in undisguised and inexplicable opulence.

The “Praetorians” of “Karamanlism”

At the same time, together with Evangelos Antonarosthe Savva Tsitouridisthe Christos Zoithe Nikos Nikolopoulosthe Krinio Kanellopoulou they united a group of “praetorians” of “Karamanism”, with the ultimate goal of claiming powerful ministries.

In the first Karamanli government, only Tsitouridis became minister for a short time in the field of Rural Development, in the second Tsitouridis and Spiliotopoulos, while Zois was content with the position of deputy minister. Those within the neo-democratic walls, as well as the stakeholders themselves, received the message that Karamanlis did not intend to share his power with them. Spiliotopoulos, the most prominent of all, saw the faction turn their backs on him in successive election contests and twice during the claim for the Municipality of Athens. The glass was cracked and would not reattach.

The Tsipras era and the “sirizotrols”

In 2015, luck dealt them a new card. Alexis Tsipras became prime minister and Karamanlis was rumored to have given his blessing. At the same time, ND acquired a new leader in 2016, Kyriakos Mitsotakis. The “Karamanlian” and “Mitsotakian” quarrels never stuck, but the memorandums had already changed a lot. Zois was elected MP with ANEL in 2012, Nikolopoulos founded the Christian Democratic Party of Greece and in 2014 joined ANEL from where he was deleted the following year. Tsitouridis founded the Hellenic Radicals party in 2019 and in 2022 he participated in the “Galazioi” movement with other former “Karamanli” and “Samaritan” officials, two initiatives that sunk headlong. Antonaros developed into a “syrizotroll”, according to his former comrades, and a prominent member of the “blue shack” in Koumoundourou, until he was forced to disown him by Karamanlis.

The opening of SYRIZA to the popular Right

Spiliotopoulos, the most intelligent of all, when he saw that the Antonis Samaras did not include him in his government, he reopened in 2017 in the tourism industry as an investor in the municipal hotel Dimitsana, achieving the same success as he had in politics. He left in 2022 after the wreck of his investment.

Shortly before the 2019 European elections, Mr Nikos Pappas he introduced Spiliotopoulos to Tsipras, but the “consulship” did not prosper even though the channels of communication remained open, thanks to Loulis, who after Evert and Karamanlis became Tsipras’ adviser. At the time, the former ND minister stated that he was concerned by the SYRIZA invitation to form a progressive front against the Far Right. In April 2023, the opening of SYRIZA to the popular Right (Spiliotopoulos, Kanellopoulou, Zoi) was delayed due to internal reactions, although Antonaros was included in the ballot of Attica.

Kasselakis, in other words, found his co-defendants waiting for him at a laid table and Tsitouridis, according to party gossip, waiting for the nod. Spiliotopoulos joined his communication team as if he had been ready for some time and not because Antonaros intervened. With the current president of SYRIZA they share the strange mixture of progressive ideas, conservative choices and luxurious habits. A hybrid of politics and a specific lifestyle that is neither right nor left.

The persistent flirting and statements

If Kasselakis hit SYRIZA like a comet, Spiliotopoulos persistently flirted with him through the pro-Syriza media. The recent ND congress, he commented, was a “turning point” for the party and distancing itself from radical liberalism. Polls, he believes, are shaping political choices for the first time, which he recommends “partial falsification of the democratic framework in which the political system operates”. Yes to non-state HEIs but in a legal way, through the revision of Article 16.

If you don’t protect the Constitution, he wrote, if you monitor journalists, politicians and military, if you target the heads of independent authorities, if you cement the evidence about Tempi and instead of giving explanations you make excuses, “don’t complain if they drag you around and compare you to authoritarian regimes like Orban’s. So that we don’t get confused…”. This was his advice to his former faction after the European Parliament resolution on the rule of law.

The book, Karanikas and Oscar Wilde

Certainly in favor of the marriage of same-sex couples, constantly wondering about the price of oil and other goods, dissecting a society that has accumulated a lot of anger and suffers from post-war, psychological trauma after memos, crises and disasters that do not allow to heal – he did not specify who , but the easily understood ones are omitted.

In 2004 he published the book “From A to Z – From the Deep” in which he analyzed his positions on politics, proving that the most original De Profundis author Oscar Wilde was right when he found that the ultimate expertise is the infinite knowledge of zero. It was very fitting that the first to enjoy his new duties was Nikos Karanikas. “Caveman, welcome” wrote on Facebook, explaining that “his political and party origin should not disturb us because it shows the panic of an apolitical and fanatical pattern of thinking, which does not suit the Left.” The Left of SYRIZA, it seems, is waiting for the European elections to clarify what suits it, but until then it risks not having an audience.