Many came out and said the main problem in the internal SYRIZA party election campaign is that the notion of image over substance – and policies, party programs – has dominated. This was directed against the Kasselakis campaign, and how it emerged through social media and an emphasis on communication, but it also concerns the candidacy of Efi Achtsioglou who, to a large extent, also invested in an image of a young but serious politician, one with political experience, who leans to the left but doesn’t communicate like a political blow-horn.

It would be auspicious if this was the main problem, because you can solve this a day after the election, when you can begin filling the image with content.

The problem that emerged in the SYRIZA election is much deeper and goes to the very core of whether we’re going to continue to have a mass-appeal Left. The fact that the Kasselakis campaign demonstrated such momentum says a great deal. And this fact does not refer to the Left, because the model of «I’m entering politics as a successful businessman, but I can pretend that I’m outside the system and talk big», is, excuse me, not a characteristic of the Left. This emanates from the Right. These are tactics followed by Trump.

It is no coincidence that Kasselakis may reserved the harshest words of all the Syriza candidates regarding Greek PM Kyriakos Mitsotakis, but he’s also the vaguest about what his true ideological identity is.

Moreover, the very fact that in a party whose members are traditionally supposed to be opinionated and seek positions and content, a climate was created where a large number believed that what’s now needed is an ‘image’, more precisely a leader with an ‘image’, even if they have no idea how he will lead, even if he has never even led, says a great deal. Because the logic of looking for a «savior» has little to do with the left. Other political traditions treat leadership in this way and project the ‘leader’. The reasoning is that what counts is the ‘face’ of leadership; at the end of the road an absence of ideology from politics, but rather communication tricks.

Only then does politics cease to function as a field for discussion and a clash of ideas and programs. And this has never helped the Left, while it has always helped the Right and the extreme right.

Of course, if this is one side of the problem, the other is that it was not only the Kasselakis candidacy that contributed to it.

To a large extent, the candidacy of Efi Achtsioglou moved in the same direction, namely, an absence of a serious political position. It’s there that image also dominated, a «rounding» of the political “edges”.

And it may not have had «Trump-like» elements, but it had all the superficiality of current social democracy. Remember Sanna Marin, the former prime minister of Finland, who is credited (by some) with her country’s accession to NATO.

All this shows the problem that concerns SYRIZA as a whole.

The inability to understand why he came to power and why he fell from power and why he crashed in the elections of May and June has brought an inability not only to act but also to act.

This leads to a constant effort to avoid an emphasis on political strategy, but to search for a lifeline. Except that usually the life jackets are attached with a rope and then they will pull you somewhere. As such, the risk of being pulled too far to the right is possible. Especially when, in fact, they have been thrown from the right, and when you’re at risk of being thrown to the rocks.

And that’s why it’s better to look for a political “compass” and a skipper, in due course, rather than a life jacket.

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