Nikos Androulakis is in a panic, and he’s not hiding it, as Alexis Tsipras is about to announce his new party.

After all, the polls show that the battle for second and third place will be fierce. And so the PASOK president has decided to emulate the former prime minister in everything.

First in rhetoric. Nikos Androulakis surprised even PASOK executives by talking about “the Maximos gang” and calling the government’s executives “Pania’s excesses”.

It is indicative that top executives such as Pavlos Geroulanos, Anna Diamantopoulou and Nadia Giannakopoulou avoided using similar terms and were even surprised to see their president slip into extremes.

This extreme and toxic rhetoric, which is driving PASOK away from the centre, is no accident. It is exactly the rhetoric of Alexis Tsipras since 2012, as Nikos Androulakis is targeting the same audience as the former president of Syriza.

In fact, the leadership of PASOK has also indulged in a race of moralizing and scandal-mongering, probably forgetting their party past. And recalling again Alexis Tsipras who talked about moral advantages and found scandals everywhere, even if he had to invent them.

Not to mention conspiracy theories, which PASOK fully adopted in Tempi where they even ended up proposing a motion of censure for… xylolas, which were non-existent. And then most party officials said that… they don’t remember having supported such theories.

The peddlers

Nikos Androulakis precisely because he is targeting the same voters as Alexis Tsipras, he is making the same mistakes as the former prime minister, picking up officials from all over the place. And even from the bottom shelf.

For example, Nadia Giannakopoulou herself stressed that with peddlers there is no serious enlargement, on the occasion of Nikos Farantouris joining PASOK. Let’s not forget that Petros Pappas and Rania Thraskia also left SYRIZA for PASOK.

And Theodora Tzakri, Evangelos Apostolakis and Nina Kasimati are probably also getting ready. All of them are executives that Alexis Tsipras brought to Syriza in an effort to expand and bitterly regretted it.

Simply because the citizens understood that all these do not inspire seriousness. And Nikos Androulakis is making exactly the same mistakes now.

The promises

Of course, the game could not be without extreme promises. For example, the proposal for four-day work by Nikos Androulakis turned out to be a communication firework, because on the one hand no state universally implements it, even the socialist Sanchez government did not finally vote for the regulation, while executives like Pavlos Geroulanos made it clear that it is not a commitment of the party but… “we will see” if and how it will be implemented.

In short, Nikos Androulakis is throwing promises into the void, just as Alexis Tsipras did. In fact, what they resemble is the proposal to tax high incomes and beyond, with what that might mean, in order to fund a series of benefits.

Provides which Nikos Androulakis has been doling out with the sack lately, just as Alexis Tsipras did. Of course, now the Syriza executives admit that they knew that all the things they have been promising for years cannot be realized.

The image and the lies

Lately Nikos Androulakis has decided to imitate even the image of Alexis Tsipras. We all saw the PASOK president with a huge coterie delivering red roses to the shooting range in Kaisariani, just like Alexis Tsipras did when he first took power.

Finally, even the image of extreme toxicity that the PASOK president has chosen to project to the outside world does not seem to be entirely in line with reality, as the government spokesman revealed that he contacted the deputy prime minister to reach an understanding on the heads of the independent authorities. In a word, he says some things in public and does others behind the scenes, just like the former Prime Minister.

The problem with hacks in politics is well known by now. If people want conspiracy theories they will turn to Kyriakos Velopoulos or Maria Karystianou. If they want toxic speech, popular courts and voices, there is Zoe Konstantopoulou. If they want unworkable promises, scandal-mongering and moralizing, there is Alexis Tsipras.

The PASOK, however, will not be voted for by the people for the above, so Nikos Androulakis is already on the wrong track.